Someone asked if I have ever given someone a second chance.
Yes, and it didn't turn out well. Some people refuse to change. Like my brother-in-law.
Beanie filed for divorce, again, after 26 years of marriage. She has been in an abusive marriage for 26 years and has left him several times. He doesn't beat her. What he does is worse. He abuses her mentally and emotionally and treats her like a possession most of the time and a piece of meat the rest of the time. Well, she filed for divorce and Mom and Hoity-Toity came down on Beanie's husband's side. Beanie had to move out of her house away from her children and animals and the home my father left for her to move in with our brother, the Mushroom (mushroom because he's always in the dark).
Meanwhile, BIL, the brother-in-law, was calling and talking to Hoity-Toity every day and Mom almost as often. Hoity-Toity told BIL who Beanie's attorney was and about all the private stuff Beanie didn't want BIL to know, sold her right down the river. Hoity-Toity has her own agenda, but that's a story for another time. Anyway, BIL called Beanie's attorney and said he was ready to sign the papers and he began working on Beanie.
He went to a psychiatrist and got on Celexa to show that he was trying to change. He bought a futon and moved into the living room, which was before Beanie eventually moved out. He whined and cried and begged and told her he was sorry -- again -- and that he would change. This is a familiar song and dance number he has used in the past, this time with the psychiatrist and medication twist to show that he is serious. In the past he has given up alcohol, promised to changed and managed the change long enough for Beanie to become convinced he really meant it this time, and even started going to church and talking to one of the parishioners and the minister about their problems. He does love to talk about what's wrong with Beanie, I mean, their problems. As soon as Beanie drops the divorce or moves back in and settles down, he goes back to being his abusive self and blaming her for all the trouble. This is known as the end of the honeymoon phase of the abuse cycle, which quickly follows the begging, pleading and apology phase of the cycle.
At any rate, taking medication and seeing a psychiatrist (he only went long enough to get the meds and has already canceled all future appointments), convinced Beanie that he meant it this time. She also missed her boys, 23 and 19, who still live at home and who BIL badgered until they agreed to move out with him when he was planning to move, and her animals, Dad's house and her things. She felt like she was being punished and losing everything while BIL was taking it all from her. She also hated being alone. Living with the Mushroom is still living alone because he's caught up in his own world on Second Life with Jess from London and doesn't pay attention to her. Beanie has never lived alone before.
Fear is a powerful motivator. Add pressure from Mom and Hoity-Toity and the belief that maybe this time BIL really meant to change and giving up everything to be alone, and Beanie caved. "We have had some good times," she told me when we talked on Monday. "It hasn't been all bad. After 26 years, I feel I owe it to him to give him one more chance. But this is the last time."
I've heard this 'last time' speech so many times I could write it in my sleep, and have. I'm still asleep now.
Beanie is co-dependent and she enables the abuse, so she is right in saying that this is partly her fault. Then again, it's not her fault because she is caught in a cycle of emotional abuse. Yes, there are good times because that is how the abuser keeps her off balance and sets her up for the abuse. There has to be a reward in order for it to work. It's not love, as BIL keeps claiming, but control. BIL doesn't like losing control and he will use, and has used, every trick in the book to further his agenda. He gets Mom on his side by appealing to her feelings about divorce being wrong no matter the reason. He appeals to Hoity-Toity's sense of greed by telling her that he'll talk Beanie into selling Dad's house so she can have the money, despite the fact that he and Beanie have a survivor's deed and have been living in the house and paying the mortgage for three years. There's a lot of equity built up in that house after Mom and Dad living there for nearly ten years and BIL and Beanie for another three, equity that Hoity-Toity can use to pay off her debts and cover up that she's been skimming money from Mom's accounts for the past year so she can buy two more houses (a condo and a house) in addition to the condo and house she already owns.
BIL tried appealing to the Mushroom, who went through a divorce a year ago, but the Mushroom wouldn't play. He told BIL, "You can cook, clean, shop for food and work. The only thing you won't have is a relationship. You need to let my sister go and give her whatever she wants."
He knows better than trying to appeal to me because I know him for the skeevy abuser he is and he tries to keep Beanie from talking to me and having anything to do with me. That's also part of the abuse -- isolating the person from family and friends -- and he has isolated Beanie for years. Emotional abuse is all about control. Read about abusive relationships and check out the graph near the bottom on the right.
Not everyone deserves a second chance. BIL certainly doesn't, but Beanie can't see it because she's caught in the cycle of abuse. Some people never get a second chance because they're dead or brain dead from being abused.
It's not just abusers who don't deserve a second chance, but anyone who has no intention of changing. Seldom do men and women who cheat on their spouses and lovers give up cheating. Once in a while, it's a one-time incident, but on average people who cheat once will cheat again, and they'll lie to cover up their activities.
Be careful about giving second chances. Weigh all the factors and pay attention to what has gone before. If you're in an abusive relationship and want to give your abuser one more chance, talk to a counselor or doctor. You may be co-dependent and/or an enabler and the best thing you can do is get out. You can always get more stuff and, if you're afraid of living alone, find a roommate. No one should have to live this way. The only way to deal with people like that is to starve them of their food source -- you.
Okay, that wasn't what I intended to write about, but sometimes I just go with it.
That is all. Disperse.
Saturday, August 07, 2010
Thursday, August 05, 2010
In the good old summertime
The best summer job I ever had was being a teenager. I never had just a summer job. When I began working, it was year round.
My first real job, outside of baby sitting and doing odd jobs around the neighborhood when I was ten, was working at Gilbert's shoe storm on Town Street in downtown Columbus, Ohio. I had to get a permit to work since I was only fifteen. I began as a salesgirl in the accessories department selling wallets, purses, shoe laces, etc. and then was promoted to cashier. With the job came a 20% discount on shoes. I had a lot of shoes in those days and spent a good portion of my paycheck in the store. How could I resist the newest styles and fashions? It was the only time I had a lot of shoes. I was fifteen and shoes were important to me then. I had a few handbags, too. Not so much now. I have four pairs of shoes: tennis shoes, slingback short heels, 3-inch black suede heels and sandals. I mostly wear the tennis shoes.
I moved from Gilbert's to a part time job at McDonald's. That lasted about six months before I got a job working with my mother at a data processing job. I made $100 a week 1971. The minimum wage then was $1.65/hour and I made $2.50 an hour, enough to buy my father a diamond tie tack for his birthday and my mother a pair of quarter karat diamond earrings for her birthday. I bought all my own clothes and gas for the car I bought with my own money. I had a lot of money in savings even though I paid room at board at home every week. I continued working in data processing for 25 years, moving to medical transcription and office management along the way. I still work in medical transcription, from home now, and supplement my income by writing book reviews and selling essays, articles, stories and books. I haven't sold enough books to quit my job, but I sell enough that I have to put aside a chunk of my income for taxes at the end of the year. I make a lot more than $100 a week forty years later.
No, my best summer job was being a teenager with no responsibilities and going to the pool when I could scrounge up enough money. I was told my parents couldn't afford a season ticket, which cost $15 in those long ago days, to the Hilltop Swim Club, which is why I started working. Until then, I sun bathed in the back yard, read a lot of books, walked everywhere with my friends and listened to a lot of rock and roll music. Those were the days.
That is all. Disperse.
My first real job, outside of baby sitting and doing odd jobs around the neighborhood when I was ten, was working at Gilbert's shoe storm on Town Street in downtown Columbus, Ohio. I had to get a permit to work since I was only fifteen. I began as a salesgirl in the accessories department selling wallets, purses, shoe laces, etc. and then was promoted to cashier. With the job came a 20% discount on shoes. I had a lot of shoes in those days and spent a good portion of my paycheck in the store. How could I resist the newest styles and fashions? It was the only time I had a lot of shoes. I was fifteen and shoes were important to me then. I had a few handbags, too. Not so much now. I have four pairs of shoes: tennis shoes, slingback short heels, 3-inch black suede heels and sandals. I mostly wear the tennis shoes.
I moved from Gilbert's to a part time job at McDonald's. That lasted about six months before I got a job working with my mother at a data processing job. I made $100 a week 1971. The minimum wage then was $1.65/hour and I made $2.50 an hour, enough to buy my father a diamond tie tack for his birthday and my mother a pair of quarter karat diamond earrings for her birthday. I bought all my own clothes and gas for the car I bought with my own money. I had a lot of money in savings even though I paid room at board at home every week. I continued working in data processing for 25 years, moving to medical transcription and office management along the way. I still work in medical transcription, from home now, and supplement my income by writing book reviews and selling essays, articles, stories and books. I haven't sold enough books to quit my job, but I sell enough that I have to put aside a chunk of my income for taxes at the end of the year. I make a lot more than $100 a week forty years later.
No, my best summer job was being a teenager with no responsibilities and going to the pool when I could scrounge up enough money. I was told my parents couldn't afford a season ticket, which cost $15 in those long ago days, to the Hilltop Swim Club, which is why I started working. Until then, I sun bathed in the back yard, read a lot of books, walked everywhere with my friends and listened to a lot of rock and roll music. Those were the days.
That is all. Disperse.
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
Writing sex and death
Ever since I saw the movie Atonement I wanted to read the book. I find out about a lot of writers by watching adaptations of their work. I finally had some time and had Ian McEwan's book, so I sat down and dove into the story.
Much of the movie stuck pretty close to McEwan's book -- until the end. That's when everything changed. Briony, in her seventies and just diagnosed with a slow decline into senility, has rewritten and sent her story to the publishers who have brought out all her previous work. The first draft of the book was written fifty years and five years after she accused Robbie Turner of raping her cousin Lola the night the twins ran away. She finally understood what was going on between Robbie and her sister Cecilia and wants to make amends. She will recant the testimony that put Robbie in a mental hospital for nearly four years and he can come back and pick up his life where he left off, go to medical school and be a successful and respected doctor without the specter of rape and mentally ill hanging over him and Cecilia. They can be happy and get married and move on with their life. She will have atoned for her sins.
That's not how it ends.
Robbie did indeed die of a septic wound from shrapnel and Cee died in a bombing that took out the tube station near where she lived. Briony's book cannot be published because Lola and Paul Marshall are now married and very wealthy and would sue the publisher for libel. You cannot libel the dead, but Lola and Paul aren't dead and Briony's mind and life are raveling out so fast it isn't likely she will survive to see her book published and Robbie vindicated posthumously. The bad guys win or, in this case, the bad guy and girl win.
From what little I've read of McEwan's work, and some of the reviews of his other books, the bad guys usually win in the end. McEwan has a fascination with sex and death that permeates everything I have read so far, including the stories in first love, last rites, most of which are crude and shocking in their descent into the depths of the connections between sex and death.
A pedophile who blames his unpopularity on his weak chin takes advantage of a young girl, exposes himself and makes her touch his penis and then kills her because no one can know what he's done. Then he poses as an innocent man who just happened to see the dead girl drifting down the canal from the bridge above. That's his story and of course no one believes him because he has a weak chin, almost no chin, just a straight slide from his lower lip down to his neck. The story is creepy and delves into the mind of an anti-social, whining, wretch who is obviously mentally ill. In that sense, McEwan captures the character perfectly.
At first I felt sorry for the guy, but it didn't take long for pity and sympathy to turn to disgust. Most of the stories begin and end in the same vein. One sexually precocious pre-pubescent boy glorying in his mastery of all things bad over his mate decides a trial run before convincing the town tramp, who will let him look at her quim for a shilling, is in order. He lures his much younger sister into a new twist on the game of Mummies and Daddies while his parents are out so he can see the female plumbing ahead of time and have sex with her. He succeeds with the help of his little sister who knows more about her body than her older brother and is shocked and upset when he pees inside her. All of this is told by a bragging, preening boy who is so generous he allows his father and uncles to gift him with a shilling when he makes more money than they do through criminal acts. After all, his father and uncles are so proud of being able to give him the shilling he doesn't want to spoil their feelings of generosity and kindness. It's not the money he enjoys, but the superiority over his elders. No doubt, he too will get away with it, as do all the perfidious and evil-minded characters in McEwan's stories.
It seems McEwan is fascinated by meanness of spirit and spiritually and emotionally stunted people who succeed at everything they do no matter who has to suffer in the process. Sex and death are integral parts of Atonement as they are in McEwan's short stories and, from what I've read, in his Booker Prize winning novel, Amsterdam. There is no doubt of McEwan's mastery of prose and his intricately plotted and executed stories, but the unsavory characters who manage to get decent people to do their dirty work for them seem to be the point of his theme. It's not just sex and death that infuse McEwan's work with life, but the perversion of sex and twisted deaths that are at the heart of them all.
What's needed is more research and more reading to get to the bottom of McEwan's themes and the driving force behind his portrayal of the darkness that inevitably triumphs.
Much of the movie stuck pretty close to McEwan's book -- until the end. That's when everything changed. Briony, in her seventies and just diagnosed with a slow decline into senility, has rewritten and sent her story to the publishers who have brought out all her previous work. The first draft of the book was written fifty years and five years after she accused Robbie Turner of raping her cousin Lola the night the twins ran away. She finally understood what was going on between Robbie and her sister Cecilia and wants to make amends. She will recant the testimony that put Robbie in a mental hospital for nearly four years and he can come back and pick up his life where he left off, go to medical school and be a successful and respected doctor without the specter of rape and mentally ill hanging over him and Cecilia. They can be happy and get married and move on with their life. She will have atoned for her sins.
That's not how it ends.
Robbie did indeed die of a septic wound from shrapnel and Cee died in a bombing that took out the tube station near where she lived. Briony's book cannot be published because Lola and Paul Marshall are now married and very wealthy and would sue the publisher for libel. You cannot libel the dead, but Lola and Paul aren't dead and Briony's mind and life are raveling out so fast it isn't likely she will survive to see her book published and Robbie vindicated posthumously. The bad guys win or, in this case, the bad guy and girl win.
From what little I've read of McEwan's work, and some of the reviews of his other books, the bad guys usually win in the end. McEwan has a fascination with sex and death that permeates everything I have read so far, including the stories in first love, last rites, most of which are crude and shocking in their descent into the depths of the connections between sex and death.
A pedophile who blames his unpopularity on his weak chin takes advantage of a young girl, exposes himself and makes her touch his penis and then kills her because no one can know what he's done. Then he poses as an innocent man who just happened to see the dead girl drifting down the canal from the bridge above. That's his story and of course no one believes him because he has a weak chin, almost no chin, just a straight slide from his lower lip down to his neck. The story is creepy and delves into the mind of an anti-social, whining, wretch who is obviously mentally ill. In that sense, McEwan captures the character perfectly.
At first I felt sorry for the guy, but it didn't take long for pity and sympathy to turn to disgust. Most of the stories begin and end in the same vein. One sexually precocious pre-pubescent boy glorying in his mastery of all things bad over his mate decides a trial run before convincing the town tramp, who will let him look at her quim for a shilling, is in order. He lures his much younger sister into a new twist on the game of Mummies and Daddies while his parents are out so he can see the female plumbing ahead of time and have sex with her. He succeeds with the help of his little sister who knows more about her body than her older brother and is shocked and upset when he pees inside her. All of this is told by a bragging, preening boy who is so generous he allows his father and uncles to gift him with a shilling when he makes more money than they do through criminal acts. After all, his father and uncles are so proud of being able to give him the shilling he doesn't want to spoil their feelings of generosity and kindness. It's not the money he enjoys, but the superiority over his elders. No doubt, he too will get away with it, as do all the perfidious and evil-minded characters in McEwan's stories.
It seems McEwan is fascinated by meanness of spirit and spiritually and emotionally stunted people who succeed at everything they do no matter who has to suffer in the process. Sex and death are integral parts of Atonement as they are in McEwan's short stories and, from what I've read, in his Booker Prize winning novel, Amsterdam. There is no doubt of McEwan's mastery of prose and his intricately plotted and executed stories, but the unsavory characters who manage to get decent people to do their dirty work for them seem to be the point of his theme. It's not just sex and death that infuse McEwan's work with life, but the perversion of sex and twisted deaths that are at the heart of them all.
What's needed is more research and more reading to get to the bottom of McEwan's themes and the driving force behind his portrayal of the darkness that inevitably triumphs.
Sunday, August 01, 2010
Unraveling the Gordian knot
Alexander the Great faced an impossible situation, one that scholars, philosophers and soldiers had failed to solve, how to untie the Gordian knot. This intricate knot turned in and about on itself that it seemed to have no beginning and no end. Faced with the need to solve the puzzle of the knot, Alexander took out his sword and sliced through the knot. He, should you pardon the pun, cut through to the heart of the matter.
It has been proposed that the situation with the war in Afghanistan is another Gordian knot: an intractable problem that needs a bold solution that will cut to the heart of the matter. Should we continue to send men and resources and money to fight in Afghanistan or should we pull out? What is the modern equivalent to Alexander's sword and the Gordian knot?
In a recent discussion I asked if a nuclear bomb was the modern version of Alexander's sword to answer the intractable problem of Afghanistan and was immediately set upon by people claiming I was inciting hatred and being casual about the millions of lives that would be lost in a nuclear attack on Afghanistan, and all from a simple question. Are nukes the modern equivalent of Alexander's sword?
Despite claiming the only answer is peace and because I am an American I prefer war to peace, these peace loving people attempted to school me on what Europe wants. I asked a simple question. I did not mean that I seriously believe that dropping nukes on Afghanistan is the answer or that we should even be there in the first place. I asked a simple question.
I was told I needed to find out what a Gordian knot really is and read Aristotle before I responded further to one Brit. She assumed that I was uneducated and ignorant of history and philosophy. She said Europe was tired of war and wanted only to deal with the economic war on their doorstep.
One Canadian claimed I was inciting hatred by my question and that I shouldn't joke about such things. My question was not a joke. I said that I was not serious about dropping nukes on Afghanistan and from that he decided I meant the question as a joke. It was no joke.
Civilization and teaching children peace is the answer to violence in the world. That is a simplistic answer to a very thorny problem. Civilization breeds war. When everyone was fighting to survive, there were no wars. There were skirmishes between groups and some groups attacked groups where there was more food in a time of famine, or to capture members of the other tribe to be used as food, but there were no wars. That took civilization. The skirmishes over food and territory were not wars any more than squabbles between groups of primates over food, mates and territory are wars. With civilization comes war.
People living together for comfort and safety, working the land, building homes, and buying and selling is the oil-soaked tinder that ignites the need for war. Prosperity takes work and the greater the prosperity the more work there is to do. One person, or a small group of people, like a family, are not enough hands. Slaves are needed. Getting slaves means war.
Running out of salt or gold or resources? Your neighbor has all those things or will at least provide a source of slavers, so it's time to go to war. It's the have nots against the haves. People seem to miss that small distinction.
Warring armies sweep across the countryside, annexing land, taking slaves and killing anyone who gets in the way, especially peaceful people who will not fight and who believe that talking and offering a peaceful solution will cool the hot blood of a man soaked in gore and covered with scars. A soldier has no time for peace. He's used to killing to get what he wants, and a peace-loving person or group of people makes his job a lot easier.
It's like a schoolyard bully. He preys on the weak and the peaceful and avoids the ones who could easily kick his ass. People may want peace, but they must also be willing to embrace violence to obtain and maintain peace. That's something else peace-loving people don't get. It is the army and force and the willingness to do violence that buys their peace.
Everything has a price. The price of peace is violence.
There have been too many writers and philosophers who have examined this question for it not to be widely understood. Watch Serenity, The Enemy Within from Star Trek or read any number of books, beginning with Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde. Man cannot exist or survive without the potential for violence. It is on that most basic of instincts to do violence that our very ability to survive is based. To be strong requires determination and grit. Violence can be controlled by intellect and balance is maintained, but until everyone in the entire world learns balance, we must keep our senses and survival instincts sharply honed or go peacefully back to the earth. The only peace thus obtained is the peace of the grave.
It has been proposed that the situation with the war in Afghanistan is another Gordian knot: an intractable problem that needs a bold solution that will cut to the heart of the matter. Should we continue to send men and resources and money to fight in Afghanistan or should we pull out? What is the modern equivalent to Alexander's sword and the Gordian knot?
In a recent discussion I asked if a nuclear bomb was the modern version of Alexander's sword to answer the intractable problem of Afghanistan and was immediately set upon by people claiming I was inciting hatred and being casual about the millions of lives that would be lost in a nuclear attack on Afghanistan, and all from a simple question. Are nukes the modern equivalent of Alexander's sword?
Despite claiming the only answer is peace and because I am an American I prefer war to peace, these peace loving people attempted to school me on what Europe wants. I asked a simple question. I did not mean that I seriously believe that dropping nukes on Afghanistan is the answer or that we should even be there in the first place. I asked a simple question.
I was told I needed to find out what a Gordian knot really is and read Aristotle before I responded further to one Brit. She assumed that I was uneducated and ignorant of history and philosophy. She said Europe was tired of war and wanted only to deal with the economic war on their doorstep.
One Canadian claimed I was inciting hatred by my question and that I shouldn't joke about such things. My question was not a joke. I said that I was not serious about dropping nukes on Afghanistan and from that he decided I meant the question as a joke. It was no joke.
Civilization and teaching children peace is the answer to violence in the world. That is a simplistic answer to a very thorny problem. Civilization breeds war. When everyone was fighting to survive, there were no wars. There were skirmishes between groups and some groups attacked groups where there was more food in a time of famine, or to capture members of the other tribe to be used as food, but there were no wars. That took civilization. The skirmishes over food and territory were not wars any more than squabbles between groups of primates over food, mates and territory are wars. With civilization comes war.
People living together for comfort and safety, working the land, building homes, and buying and selling is the oil-soaked tinder that ignites the need for war. Prosperity takes work and the greater the prosperity the more work there is to do. One person, or a small group of people, like a family, are not enough hands. Slaves are needed. Getting slaves means war.
Running out of salt or gold or resources? Your neighbor has all those things or will at least provide a source of slavers, so it's time to go to war. It's the have nots against the haves. People seem to miss that small distinction.
Warring armies sweep across the countryside, annexing land, taking slaves and killing anyone who gets in the way, especially peaceful people who will not fight and who believe that talking and offering a peaceful solution will cool the hot blood of a man soaked in gore and covered with scars. A soldier has no time for peace. He's used to killing to get what he wants, and a peace-loving person or group of people makes his job a lot easier.
It's like a schoolyard bully. He preys on the weak and the peaceful and avoids the ones who could easily kick his ass. People may want peace, but they must also be willing to embrace violence to obtain and maintain peace. That's something else peace-loving people don't get. It is the army and force and the willingness to do violence that buys their peace.
Everything has a price. The price of peace is violence.
There have been too many writers and philosophers who have examined this question for it not to be widely understood. Watch Serenity, The Enemy Within from Star Trek or read any number of books, beginning with Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde. Man cannot exist or survive without the potential for violence. It is on that most basic of instincts to do violence that our very ability to survive is based. To be strong requires determination and grit. Violence can be controlled by intellect and balance is maintained, but until everyone in the entire world learns balance, we must keep our senses and survival instincts sharply honed or go peacefully back to the earth. The only peace thus obtained is the peace of the grave.
It's complicated
I was watching It's Complicated again, for the tenth time, and had one of those ah-ha moments. I never had the kind of relationship that Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin had as a married couple, not in either of my marriages. Both times I was caught in a bad situation and made the best of things by getting married.
One of the things I've learned by watching It's Complicated is about what brings people together. I've also learned to recognize love. I never had that with either of my husbands. I see that now. I saw it when I asked for a divorce and I knew it then because it was so easy for me to walk away. No tears. No emotional breakdowns. No psychic upheavals. When I found out both husbands were cheating on me I was relieved because I had a way out. They gave me a get out of jail free card and I used it. Divorce was cut and dried the first time and difficult the second time; Nick didn't want to lose his meal ticket (me) and getting rid of him, most of my friends and family heard me say, was like scraping gum off the bottom of my shoe on a hot August day. It took strategy and moving away with no forwarding address, and two years of waiting him out, to get my legal freedom.
There have been two men in my life I have loved. I walked away from the first one because I was tired of being disappointed, weary of him making promises he never kept, and waiting for him to make up his mind about what he was going to do. He wouldn't move ahead, so I moved away, and I cried for weeks.
The other man has kept me dangling for six years and I have decided I'm not waiting any longer for him either. I love him still, but he's never going to be the man I want or need. Fear keeps him from moving forward, fear of losing his stuff and fear of an uncertain future. I cannot offer him a guarantee that everything will work out. I don't know that. I only know that I love him and I'll do everything and anything to work things out. That only works if there are two people willing to work. I cannot do it alone and he's not going to help, so I'm done. I've waited long enough, listened to enough empty words and apologies. He's a coward, and I know about cowards. He won't change so I'm making the decision he won't. I've ended it.
Just as Meryl Streep knew there was no way back with Alec Baldwin, I know there is no way forward with him. I love him. He will always be a part of my life, but I have shed enough tears, nursed enough pain and waited silent and alone for long enough. We are done. I wish him well, but he won't be happy. He hasn't been happy all these years, but he's used to the fear and depression and his stuff. That will have to be enough for him. For me, there is an open door and an open road and I plan to explore them both.
That's what happens with really good movies. They mirror the truths of life and make you think while you laugh and cry and sigh in the darkness. I will watch It's Complicated again and again and yet again because it's a great movie with some wonderful poignant and funny moments (how could it not with Steve Martin as the romantic lead?), and because I find truth and honesty, not only in the actors' performances, but in the story. Someone knows whereof they speak, and they made me think and reassess my life. I don't want to go back, but I can move forward. That's the great thing about movies and life, there's always another good movie and another good day ahead.
That is all. Disperse.
One of the things I've learned by watching It's Complicated is about what brings people together. I've also learned to recognize love. I never had that with either of my husbands. I see that now. I saw it when I asked for a divorce and I knew it then because it was so easy for me to walk away. No tears. No emotional breakdowns. No psychic upheavals. When I found out both husbands were cheating on me I was relieved because I had a way out. They gave me a get out of jail free card and I used it. Divorce was cut and dried the first time and difficult the second time; Nick didn't want to lose his meal ticket (me) and getting rid of him, most of my friends and family heard me say, was like scraping gum off the bottom of my shoe on a hot August day. It took strategy and moving away with no forwarding address, and two years of waiting him out, to get my legal freedom.
There have been two men in my life I have loved. I walked away from the first one because I was tired of being disappointed, weary of him making promises he never kept, and waiting for him to make up his mind about what he was going to do. He wouldn't move ahead, so I moved away, and I cried for weeks.
The other man has kept me dangling for six years and I have decided I'm not waiting any longer for him either. I love him still, but he's never going to be the man I want or need. Fear keeps him from moving forward, fear of losing his stuff and fear of an uncertain future. I cannot offer him a guarantee that everything will work out. I don't know that. I only know that I love him and I'll do everything and anything to work things out. That only works if there are two people willing to work. I cannot do it alone and he's not going to help, so I'm done. I've waited long enough, listened to enough empty words and apologies. He's a coward, and I know about cowards. He won't change so I'm making the decision he won't. I've ended it.
Just as Meryl Streep knew there was no way back with Alec Baldwin, I know there is no way forward with him. I love him. He will always be a part of my life, but I have shed enough tears, nursed enough pain and waited silent and alone for long enough. We are done. I wish him well, but he won't be happy. He hasn't been happy all these years, but he's used to the fear and depression and his stuff. That will have to be enough for him. For me, there is an open door and an open road and I plan to explore them both.
That's what happens with really good movies. They mirror the truths of life and make you think while you laugh and cry and sigh in the darkness. I will watch It's Complicated again and again and yet again because it's a great movie with some wonderful poignant and funny moments (how could it not with Steve Martin as the romantic lead?), and because I find truth and honesty, not only in the actors' performances, but in the story. Someone knows whereof they speak, and they made me think and reassess my life. I don't want to go back, but I can move forward. That's the great thing about movies and life, there's always another good movie and another good day ahead.
That is all. Disperse.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Getting hard
The more I interact with amateurs, the more I am inclined to move to a cave and live like Thoreau. It isn't because they're stupid (they are) or that they're unprofessional (yep, that too) but because they are rude and ignorant and take delight in trampling all over everything that isn't theirs.
I recently critiqued another writer's work. It came up in the queue. In order to get a critique, I have to give one. This person sought me out the next day and trashed my hard work, giving me the lowest scores possible. At first, the comments seemed unnecessarily vicious and hammered away at literary writing techniques that have nothing to do with genre writing. I decided to check the person out to thank them (teeth gritted) for their carefully considered comments. That's when I found out I had written a critique of their work the day before. I pointed out the cliches in their work and the too obvious plot devices, never giving a score below 3/5, and offered suggestions that would elevate their work above the cookie cutter style they had chosen (beautiful, rich, bored woman in expensive car seeks out starving young man living in hostel and selling newspapers in the rain for food offers hot bath, gourmet food and top shelf alcohol for the night in her secluded, well appointed hideaway). There was no sense of place. The dialogue was stilted and obviously pulled from some television show or 1900s melodrama. The characters were one-dimensional and the situation trite.
Unlike my usual methods where I state flat out that someone has screwed the English language with a broken skewer and trampled it with jump boots into the quagmire of a tar pit, I used tact. He used none and simply had a screaming tantrum all over my hard work. I feel like I'm flying with turkeys. It's enough to dishearten and depress, and it has done both in the recent past.
On a hunch, I checked out the other negative critiques and they were also people I had given low marks for horrid, misspelled and grammar-deficient writing. Flying with turkeys again.
I know professionals can be rude and snarky, but at least they have some credentials backing up their comments. These amateurs have none, as their lack of understanding or familiarity with the English language and basic grammar show. Now I know why successful writers refuse to read amateur work. It makes them despair for the future of literature. And I certainly do.
I don't expect everyone to love everything I write, but I do expect a certain level of professionalism and tact. I give what I expect to get -- the golden rule. Too bad no one has taught these literary anthropoids that being able to use a computer keyboard does not mean they can write.
Oh, well, time to go back to my cave and read good writing or even marginal writing with promise. I have so many to choose from.
That is all. Disperse.
I recently critiqued another writer's work. It came up in the queue. In order to get a critique, I have to give one. This person sought me out the next day and trashed my hard work, giving me the lowest scores possible. At first, the comments seemed unnecessarily vicious and hammered away at literary writing techniques that have nothing to do with genre writing. I decided to check the person out to thank them (teeth gritted) for their carefully considered comments. That's when I found out I had written a critique of their work the day before. I pointed out the cliches in their work and the too obvious plot devices, never giving a score below 3/5, and offered suggestions that would elevate their work above the cookie cutter style they had chosen (beautiful, rich, bored woman in expensive car seeks out starving young man living in hostel and selling newspapers in the rain for food offers hot bath, gourmet food and top shelf alcohol for the night in her secluded, well appointed hideaway). There was no sense of place. The dialogue was stilted and obviously pulled from some television show or 1900s melodrama. The characters were one-dimensional and the situation trite.
Unlike my usual methods where I state flat out that someone has screwed the English language with a broken skewer and trampled it with jump boots into the quagmire of a tar pit, I used tact. He used none and simply had a screaming tantrum all over my hard work. I feel like I'm flying with turkeys. It's enough to dishearten and depress, and it has done both in the recent past.
On a hunch, I checked out the other negative critiques and they were also people I had given low marks for horrid, misspelled and grammar-deficient writing. Flying with turkeys again.
I know professionals can be rude and snarky, but at least they have some credentials backing up their comments. These amateurs have none, as their lack of understanding or familiarity with the English language and basic grammar show. Now I know why successful writers refuse to read amateur work. It makes them despair for the future of literature. And I certainly do.
I don't expect everyone to love everything I write, but I do expect a certain level of professionalism and tact. I give what I expect to get -- the golden rule. Too bad no one has taught these literary anthropoids that being able to use a computer keyboard does not mean they can write.
Oh, well, time to go back to my cave and read good writing or even marginal writing with promise. I have so many to choose from.
That is all. Disperse.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Just for 30 days
If I could be one person for 30 days, it would be the person in charge of making the decision about whether or not a mega mosque should be built at Ground Zero in NYC.
It cannot be just about money, although it is obvious the legislators and mayor of NYC had their heads up their collective backsides when they decided to raise the taxes on the rich, who responded by leaving NYC in droves. But to put up a mega mosque at Ground Zero is sheer lunacy.
The Muslims are upset at the backlash of feeling and point to the freedom of religion and freedom of speech as backing their claim that a mosque should be built there. Setting aside the fact that it was Muslim extremists who brought down the towers and killed thousands, to honor the Muslim dead and their religion by erecting a mega mosque is to forget about the people who died and were not Muslim. Is it right to honor the religion of one small group of people over the religion of the tens of thousands who died? I think not.
If a religious center is built it should represent the religions of all those who died that day and in the days that followed, a mega religious center not a mega mosque.
I have read arguments that a mega mosque would be like the Taj Mahal, erected by a bereaved Mogul (Muslim) king honoring his dead wife. He was the ruler and his wife was queen (rani), so that was understandable. Neither America nor NYC have kings or rajahs, so a monument to one group of people and their religion is not understandable. What is understandable is the outrage that so many Americans feel. This is what free speech is all about: open discussion and conversations from all sides of the issue, not just the popular and politically correct side.
No one is keeping Muslims from celebrating their religion or building mosques on other sides in America, but it is the right of every American to have a say in whether or not a mosque should be built at Ground Zero? Celebrate your religion anywhere. Roll out your prayer mats and point them toward Mecca while you pray at Ground Zero, but don't expect for Americans to embrace putting up a monument to the Muslim extremists who destroyed two buildings to throw American commerce and lives into chaos and killed tens of thousands of Americans. Yes, there were Muslims who were killed on 9/11/2001, but there were far more non-Muslims who were killed that day. To honor one group is to ignore the deaths and religions of all the other groups. As far as I am concerned, there isn't enough money in the world to allow that to happen. As the person in charge of this decision, it would be a center for all religions or business as usual.
Now, down the street a couple of blocks among all the other churches and synagogues, is something else again. To that I say, go for it.
That is all. Disperse.
It cannot be just about money, although it is obvious the legislators and mayor of NYC had their heads up their collective backsides when they decided to raise the taxes on the rich, who responded by leaving NYC in droves. But to put up a mega mosque at Ground Zero is sheer lunacy.
The Muslims are upset at the backlash of feeling and point to the freedom of religion and freedom of speech as backing their claim that a mosque should be built there. Setting aside the fact that it was Muslim extremists who brought down the towers and killed thousands, to honor the Muslim dead and their religion by erecting a mega mosque is to forget about the people who died and were not Muslim. Is it right to honor the religion of one small group of people over the religion of the tens of thousands who died? I think not.
If a religious center is built it should represent the religions of all those who died that day and in the days that followed, a mega religious center not a mega mosque.
I have read arguments that a mega mosque would be like the Taj Mahal, erected by a bereaved Mogul (Muslim) king honoring his dead wife. He was the ruler and his wife was queen (rani), so that was understandable. Neither America nor NYC have kings or rajahs, so a monument to one group of people and their religion is not understandable. What is understandable is the outrage that so many Americans feel. This is what free speech is all about: open discussion and conversations from all sides of the issue, not just the popular and politically correct side.
No one is keeping Muslims from celebrating their religion or building mosques on other sides in America, but it is the right of every American to have a say in whether or not a mosque should be built at Ground Zero? Celebrate your religion anywhere. Roll out your prayer mats and point them toward Mecca while you pray at Ground Zero, but don't expect for Americans to embrace putting up a monument to the Muslim extremists who destroyed two buildings to throw American commerce and lives into chaos and killed tens of thousands of Americans. Yes, there were Muslims who were killed on 9/11/2001, but there were far more non-Muslims who were killed that day. To honor one group is to ignore the deaths and religions of all the other groups. As far as I am concerned, there isn't enough money in the world to allow that to happen. As the person in charge of this decision, it would be a center for all religions or business as usual.
Now, down the street a couple of blocks among all the other churches and synagogues, is something else again. To that I say, go for it.
That is all. Disperse.
Monday, June 28, 2010
At the end of the rainbow
I mentioned to someone this evening that I had most of what I need and some of the things I want and that I was content. He said that was a perverse way of thinking and that it was sad that I didn't need anyone or anything. He didn't get what I said or what I meant.
I've spent most of my life traveling around looking for the place where I fit in. I didn't and don't fit in with my family; I'm too different: physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and financially. I don't have a lot of things and I don't own my own house. According to them, I'm a failure.
My brother spends his life on Second Life trying to find someone to marry because he is tired of living alone. He's been divorced for a year. He didn't realize he was living alone before. His wife led her life and he led his. She was gone most of the time, and so was he. He was working and she was chasing after bikers -- in the name of religious conversion, of course. When he was home, he was in his office in the basement on the computer playing Second Life. His life really hasn't changed. He's still paying his ex-wife's bills and doesn't see his children very often. The only difference is that it is quieter now.
Hoity Toity is into real estate these days. She has a big house she shares with my mother, but liked it better when she lived in it alone. That is, alone after four divorces. She has a sports car, a truck and a car she drives during the week. She owns two condos and just bought another little house for her daughter Shanna who hasn't held down a job longer than six months, hasn't worked in years, lives with a series of friends, has a drug dealer boyfriend who is the father of her unborn child, shoots up heroine, snorts cocaine and has a fondness for OxyContin and other narcotics. Her daughter is waiting for the renovations to be completed so she and another one of her friends can move into the house with her seven dogs. Her son is in prison again for drug dealing and breaking and entering. SWAT teams and the FBI had looked for him for months and even broke into Hoity Toity's house looking for him on several occasions. Her son was featured on Crime Stoppers in Central Ohio.
Hoity Toity retired from the state about two years ago and has spent the last two years working for the state as an outside contractor. She recently went back to work for the state in the same job for a huge salary and benefits.
Beanie has finally asked her husband for a divorce. Hubby responded by first threatening to kill himself and then kill whoever she was leaving him for. When neither of those tactics worked, he started whining to anyone who would listen about how Beanie is hurting him and how much he loves her while he slanders our father and whispers lies into their sons' ears. Yeah, he loves her. They have two homes, several horses and just got back from yet another cruise in the Caribbean.
I'm the odd man out with my rented cottage, fourteen-year-old car that still runs perfectly, working at home and making ends meet with book reviews, articles and published stories and novels. I don't have a lot, but I have enough. I still want a few things and I'll get them eventually, but my life doesn't revolve around what I want. I get paid for reading books. I don't have to fight traffic to go to work and spend my off hours writing and watching movies on DVD. I go out with friends, have a fairly considerable correspondence and keep in touch with friends and Beanie. I'm not married, having been divorced for nearly 20 years, and have a quiet life for the most part. I'm still working for my cabin in the mountains and living by my writing, and that will come in time.
The fellow who called me perverted didn't get what I mean. I'm not blissful, but there are blissful moments. I'm not ecstatically happy all the time, but I am sometimes. I don't think I could stand an extended state of bliss. It would keep me from writing or working. Yes, there are things I'd still liked to do and have. Yes, I sometimes miss having someone around all the time, but not enough to want to get married again. I'd have to get rid of too many books or move from my little cottage. My life isn't perfect, but I am contented most of the time. Isn't that what everyone keeps looking for -- how to be happy and contented? There's no secret to finding that particular pot of gold beneath the rainbow. It is, as Dorothy realizes when Glenda, the Good Witch of the North, asks her, in her own back yard, and she isn't missing anything if she doesn't already have it.
Happiness is a choice. I choose to be happy with what I have. I didn't enjoy always feeling lost and alone and like I was missing something that was always just out of my reach. Wanting things I didn't have made me miserable and sometimes I almost felt envious, but I've had a close look at how other people live and they are miserable, too, even more miserable than I ever was. They're trying to find happiness in things and houses and illicit relationships or online when happiness has always been within their grasp. They're looking in the wrong places.
I know what the fellow's problem really is. He's still trying to convince me that I'm missing happiness because I'm not married or don't have a friends with benefits. He's shocked that I don't need someone to make me happy and that makes me perverted. I've always been different from most people, so maybe being content with what I have is perverted. That is the kind of perversion more people need. Don't you agree?
That is all. Disperse.
I've spent most of my life traveling around looking for the place where I fit in. I didn't and don't fit in with my family; I'm too different: physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and financially. I don't have a lot of things and I don't own my own house. According to them, I'm a failure.
My brother spends his life on Second Life trying to find someone to marry because he is tired of living alone. He's been divorced for a year. He didn't realize he was living alone before. His wife led her life and he led his. She was gone most of the time, and so was he. He was working and she was chasing after bikers -- in the name of religious conversion, of course. When he was home, he was in his office in the basement on the computer playing Second Life. His life really hasn't changed. He's still paying his ex-wife's bills and doesn't see his children very often. The only difference is that it is quieter now.
Hoity Toity is into real estate these days. She has a big house she shares with my mother, but liked it better when she lived in it alone. That is, alone after four divorces. She has a sports car, a truck and a car she drives during the week. She owns two condos and just bought another little house for her daughter Shanna who hasn't held down a job longer than six months, hasn't worked in years, lives with a series of friends, has a drug dealer boyfriend who is the father of her unborn child, shoots up heroine, snorts cocaine and has a fondness for OxyContin and other narcotics. Her daughter is waiting for the renovations to be completed so she and another one of her friends can move into the house with her seven dogs. Her son is in prison again for drug dealing and breaking and entering. SWAT teams and the FBI had looked for him for months and even broke into Hoity Toity's house looking for him on several occasions. Her son was featured on Crime Stoppers in Central Ohio.
Hoity Toity retired from the state about two years ago and has spent the last two years working for the state as an outside contractor. She recently went back to work for the state in the same job for a huge salary and benefits.
Beanie has finally asked her husband for a divorce. Hubby responded by first threatening to kill himself and then kill whoever she was leaving him for. When neither of those tactics worked, he started whining to anyone who would listen about how Beanie is hurting him and how much he loves her while he slanders our father and whispers lies into their sons' ears. Yeah, he loves her. They have two homes, several horses and just got back from yet another cruise in the Caribbean.
I'm the odd man out with my rented cottage, fourteen-year-old car that still runs perfectly, working at home and making ends meet with book reviews, articles and published stories and novels. I don't have a lot, but I have enough. I still want a few things and I'll get them eventually, but my life doesn't revolve around what I want. I get paid for reading books. I don't have to fight traffic to go to work and spend my off hours writing and watching movies on DVD. I go out with friends, have a fairly considerable correspondence and keep in touch with friends and Beanie. I'm not married, having been divorced for nearly 20 years, and have a quiet life for the most part. I'm still working for my cabin in the mountains and living by my writing, and that will come in time.
The fellow who called me perverted didn't get what I mean. I'm not blissful, but there are blissful moments. I'm not ecstatically happy all the time, but I am sometimes. I don't think I could stand an extended state of bliss. It would keep me from writing or working. Yes, there are things I'd still liked to do and have. Yes, I sometimes miss having someone around all the time, but not enough to want to get married again. I'd have to get rid of too many books or move from my little cottage. My life isn't perfect, but I am contented most of the time. Isn't that what everyone keeps looking for -- how to be happy and contented? There's no secret to finding that particular pot of gold beneath the rainbow. It is, as Dorothy realizes when Glenda, the Good Witch of the North, asks her, in her own back yard, and she isn't missing anything if she doesn't already have it.
Happiness is a choice. I choose to be happy with what I have. I didn't enjoy always feeling lost and alone and like I was missing something that was always just out of my reach. Wanting things I didn't have made me miserable and sometimes I almost felt envious, but I've had a close look at how other people live and they are miserable, too, even more miserable than I ever was. They're trying to find happiness in things and houses and illicit relationships or online when happiness has always been within their grasp. They're looking in the wrong places.
I know what the fellow's problem really is. He's still trying to convince me that I'm missing happiness because I'm not married or don't have a friends with benefits. He's shocked that I don't need someone to make me happy and that makes me perverted. I've always been different from most people, so maybe being content with what I have is perverted. That is the kind of perversion more people need. Don't you agree?
That is all. Disperse.
Monday, June 21, 2010
A Solar Ballet
It was still dark outside when rioting birds woke me from a dreamless sleep. I'd had trouble getting to sleep last night because it was too warm. One moment I was tossing and turning and the next the cacophony of tweets and twitters pierced the dream bubble and I was suddenly awake. Less than an hour later I am awake, eyes watering and sneezing from the pine pollen. The birds have finally quieted, their clattering announcement of summer having finally arrived over. It is the summer solstice, the beginning of three months of heat and relentless light that starts with the longest day of the year. We are closest to the sun, unable to hide from the blazing glare for sixteen hours, or a touch more. The blessed balm of darkness is in short shrift today and the sun will go down in a battle that will spill blood across the skies, molten copper along the horizon, as the earth turns its face away for a brief respite before spinning back around to face the sun again. A pink blush on the horizon and then liquid fire coalesces into a spinning globe of seething fire, the engine of life in our little corner of the galaxy.
I read somewhere that the earth spins at roughly 1000 mph (seems much slower) and the sun at 60,000 mph and no one is quite sure how fast the galaxy spins away from its point of origin. The point is that this spaceship we call Earth is constantly in motion, spinning on its axis, as it dances around the sun, now close and soon farther away, pirouetting on one leg like the ballet dancer in the story of the little tin soldier who stands ever at guard on his one tin leg because there wasn't enough tin to make him whole. Everything in motion, spinning, dancing, spiraling without stop until the rubber band of creation reaches its limit and back we spin to the point of origin to wink out and burst forth once again in another Big Bang. At least that is the theory. We'll not be here in this form when it happens so we won't know when worm holes and dark matter and black holes give up their vast energy and succumb to the inexorable return to the beginning like salmon pulled over falls and against the current to the spawning grounds where they once emerged with minute tails and fins and scales like a flash of light in the rippling waters before they set off on their journey to the sea. Always in motion, ever eating and excreting and coursing through the briny waters until the moment of return when they may die along the way, spent from fighting the current rushing to the sea, never to reach the spawning grounds so the next generation can be born to take their place.
After today, after the moment when the sun crested the fiery mirage of the horizon, the days will grow shorter by a few minutes and then hours until we reached the farthest point in our dance with the sun to the shortest day in the year. Night will reign supreme for sixteen or so hours. We will have reached the tipping point and begin to dance back toward the sun and to this point one year later in our solar dance when we come nearest to the sun's embrace. Near enough to bask in its ardent gaze but not near enough to scorch the Earth's gown, spinning close, flirting with danger, and spinning away again in a timeless dance that is all about time, this solar ballet.
For this moment, this day, I wish you a happy summer solstice. The year is half gone, or maybe the year is half begun. Your choice.
I read somewhere that the earth spins at roughly 1000 mph (seems much slower) and the sun at 60,000 mph and no one is quite sure how fast the galaxy spins away from its point of origin. The point is that this spaceship we call Earth is constantly in motion, spinning on its axis, as it dances around the sun, now close and soon farther away, pirouetting on one leg like the ballet dancer in the story of the little tin soldier who stands ever at guard on his one tin leg because there wasn't enough tin to make him whole. Everything in motion, spinning, dancing, spiraling without stop until the rubber band of creation reaches its limit and back we spin to the point of origin to wink out and burst forth once again in another Big Bang. At least that is the theory. We'll not be here in this form when it happens so we won't know when worm holes and dark matter and black holes give up their vast energy and succumb to the inexorable return to the beginning like salmon pulled over falls and against the current to the spawning grounds where they once emerged with minute tails and fins and scales like a flash of light in the rippling waters before they set off on their journey to the sea. Always in motion, ever eating and excreting and coursing through the briny waters until the moment of return when they may die along the way, spent from fighting the current rushing to the sea, never to reach the spawning grounds so the next generation can be born to take their place.
After today, after the moment when the sun crested the fiery mirage of the horizon, the days will grow shorter by a few minutes and then hours until we reached the farthest point in our dance with the sun to the shortest day in the year. Night will reign supreme for sixteen or so hours. We will have reached the tipping point and begin to dance back toward the sun and to this point one year later in our solar dance when we come nearest to the sun's embrace. Near enough to bask in its ardent gaze but not near enough to scorch the Earth's gown, spinning close, flirting with danger, and spinning away again in a timeless dance that is all about time, this solar ballet.
For this moment, this day, I wish you a happy summer solstice. The year is half gone, or maybe the year is half begun. Your choice.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Person or product
With all the talk about branding and shelf life and marketing, my head is in a whirl about being an author. After years of hard work and learning and writing, and thinking that all there was to being an author was writing a good book, I'm at a loss. Then I read Rachelle Gardner's post about choosing a literary agent and I knew what I wanted to find and how to find it.
I am a writer. It's what I do. It's what I think about. It's what I've always been in one form or another. I write books. I also write articles and short stories, and poetry on rare occasions. I didn't want to sell books, or market, brand, network or make books. I wanted to write. And I have written. But looking for an agent has been a disappointing experience, in part because I was so busy putting together winning queries and packaging myself and my book to tantalize, excite and entice an agent who would be enthusiastic about the work when I should have been thinking about what kind of an agent I want.
I want an agent like Lauren Bacall in the movie version of Stephen King's Misery. I want a clone of Maxwell Perkins or Lewis Jackman in Return to Peyton Place, an agent who sees the person behind the writer and wants to publish everything I write. Someone who sees me as more than a single book. An agent who represents a person -- me -- and not just a book, a single title, or series, and then moves on to the next book.
In all of the rejections from agents I have queried, each has said I'm a good writer, but s/he is not passionate about the book I'm offering. They were excited by my query and proposal package, but just weren't enthusiastic enough about the work. Nowhere in all those polite and politically correct rejections did anyone mention being enthusiastic about me as a writer, a person who turns out good work and will continue to do so. But how do I find an agent interested in more than one project? That is the question.
At this point, I'm not sure. What I do know is that I want an agent who is enthusiastic about representing me and sees me as a writer with a bright future. I'm not my book; that is the product of my imagination, experience, evolution, talent and hard work. It is a product any competent person, or people, can package, market and sell. The engine that drives this assembly line of words and ideas continues to run and produce. I need to find someone who understands that and is passionate about a relationship with me. A relationship with my book is a short term affair. A relationship with me is a long term arrangement. That's the person I want and need. Just point me in the right direction.
I am a writer. It's what I do. It's what I think about. It's what I've always been in one form or another. I write books. I also write articles and short stories, and poetry on rare occasions. I didn't want to sell books, or market, brand, network or make books. I wanted to write. And I have written. But looking for an agent has been a disappointing experience, in part because I was so busy putting together winning queries and packaging myself and my book to tantalize, excite and entice an agent who would be enthusiastic about the work when I should have been thinking about what kind of an agent I want.
I want an agent like Lauren Bacall in the movie version of Stephen King's Misery. I want a clone of Maxwell Perkins or Lewis Jackman in Return to Peyton Place, an agent who sees the person behind the writer and wants to publish everything I write. Someone who sees me as more than a single book. An agent who represents a person -- me -- and not just a book, a single title, or series, and then moves on to the next book.
In all of the rejections from agents I have queried, each has said I'm a good writer, but s/he is not passionate about the book I'm offering. They were excited by my query and proposal package, but just weren't enthusiastic enough about the work. Nowhere in all those polite and politically correct rejections did anyone mention being enthusiastic about me as a writer, a person who turns out good work and will continue to do so. But how do I find an agent interested in more than one project? That is the question.
At this point, I'm not sure. What I do know is that I want an agent who is enthusiastic about representing me and sees me as a writer with a bright future. I'm not my book; that is the product of my imagination, experience, evolution, talent and hard work. It is a product any competent person, or people, can package, market and sell. The engine that drives this assembly line of words and ideas continues to run and produce. I need to find someone who understands that and is passionate about a relationship with me. A relationship with my book is a short term affair. A relationship with me is a long term arrangement. That's the person I want and need. Just point me in the right direction.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
The dead speak
After five years of avoiding the show, I decided to find out what made the show Bones such a winner and how it had lasted for five years. I was not disappointed. I was, however, interested in learning more about the real life model for Temperance Brennan when I read the show was based on Kathy Reichs's detective novels told from the perspective of a forensic anthropologist, so I ordered Deja Dead and began reading as soon as it arrived.
I looked forward to seeing a crime solved from the bones of a case and to get a close-up view of the process of telling a person's life from the states of their skeletal remains. I got that and more than I had hoped in Kathy Reichs's novel. The details are chilling and exceptional, as they would be since Reichs is a working and accredited forensic anthropologist, and she is much more approachable and human than her television counterpart.
The writing has gritty and raw and hard-edged, but Reichs has a tendency to work too hard at creating metaphors, so hard that they often come off flat and intrusive. Where Reichs excels is not only in the details of forensic pathology, but in giving life to Tempe Brennan and her emotions. Brennan's attention to detail in her work and willingness to take chances in the field, even though she has no field training, makes her vulnerable and fascinating. It's also provides a base for a character arc that gives her plenty of room to grow.
In her drive to make Deja Dead more than just a police, or rather forensic, procedural, Reichs's execution does create some problems. In trying to write a hard-boiled novel with literary sensibilities, she is out of her depth most of the time, the writing constipated where it should be free flowing. She does, however, manage to pull of a one-two metaphoric punch that shows she, as well as Brennan, is learning and growing, or rather that she managed to get out of Brennan's way and let the character take the lead. One memorable example is when Brennan goes to a food stand to get a hot dog.
The guy behind the stand is a John Belushi look-alike. His clothes were damp and smelled of smoke and fat and a spice I didn't recognize. Droplets sparkled in his thick hair. When I glanced over he smiled at me, cocked one bushy eyebrow and ran his tongue slowly along his upper lip. He might as well have shown me his hemorrhoid.
Deja Dead is more than a forensic anthropologist's eye view of tracking and catching a serial killer. It is the first steps of a quickly maturing author who has an exacting eye for detail, a fine sense of theater and a growing grasp of what makes a story ring with truth when she lets the characters speak for themselves.
I much prefer Reichs's version of Brennan to Emily Deschanel's, but both have charms that make watching and reading them worth while.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Dream a dear little deer for me
Ever have a dream that seems to be saying something, but you're not sure what? I had one last night.
There was a doe wandering through my dream. At first it just wandered through the living room while I was up in the loft. I looked down and there it was just passing through. The next thing I know I had come home, unlocked the door and walked in to find the same doe lounging on my sofa. It wasn't frightened when I walked in and it seemed as though we knew each other. I laid down on the bed near the sofa and the deer got up and came to me, lying down next to me. A friend came in and asked what the deer was doing there. I explained it was there when I came home, inside my locked house. The doe got up and let me run my hands along her body because my friend asked if the doe was pregnant. She was. Once I ascertained her gravid state, I stroked her from head to belly once again, she nuzzled me, I hugged her and then she walked out the door as though she were a guest leaving.
There was such a sense of calm familiarity in the exchange as if deer appear in my house while I'm gone all the time and lie down beside me unafraid and as naturally as though it had happened many times before. It was surreal and at the same time as natural as if the doe had been a person, a friend.
According to the dream dictionaries I checked this morning, deer symbolize "grace, compassion, gentleness, meekness and natural beauty. It has feminine qualities and may point to the feminine aspect within yourself." Deer can also symbolize someone who is 'dear' to you, except I don't know anyone who is pregnant. Deer could be naïveté and gullibility or vulnerability. I don't get that sense from the dream.
Many years ago, Don told me that every aspect of a dream is a facet of the dreamer. In other words, I am the deer, the sofa, the door, the key, the other people in the dream, the bed, the loft, everything, right down to the clock on the mantel and the pictures on the wall. He said I should say, "I am the clock and that means...." He came up with an interpretation of a dream where he was himself (in the dream) and the woman to whom he was making love. Uh, no. Not for me that kind of dream interpretation. I feel like there is something else going on here and I don't think I'm a pregnant doe who can pick locks and will patiently wait until the tenant comes home. Nope, definitely too weird for me.
Anyone else have an interpretation? Where is Joseph when you need him?
That is all. Disperse.
There was a doe wandering through my dream. At first it just wandered through the living room while I was up in the loft. I looked down and there it was just passing through. The next thing I know I had come home, unlocked the door and walked in to find the same doe lounging on my sofa. It wasn't frightened when I walked in and it seemed as though we knew each other. I laid down on the bed near the sofa and the deer got up and came to me, lying down next to me. A friend came in and asked what the deer was doing there. I explained it was there when I came home, inside my locked house. The doe got up and let me run my hands along her body because my friend asked if the doe was pregnant. She was. Once I ascertained her gravid state, I stroked her from head to belly once again, she nuzzled me, I hugged her and then she walked out the door as though she were a guest leaving.
There was such a sense of calm familiarity in the exchange as if deer appear in my house while I'm gone all the time and lie down beside me unafraid and as naturally as though it had happened many times before. It was surreal and at the same time as natural as if the doe had been a person, a friend.
According to the dream dictionaries I checked this morning, deer symbolize "grace, compassion, gentleness, meekness and natural beauty. It has feminine qualities and may point to the feminine aspect within yourself." Deer can also symbolize someone who is 'dear' to you, except I don't know anyone who is pregnant. Deer could be naïveté and gullibility or vulnerability. I don't get that sense from the dream.
Many years ago, Don told me that every aspect of a dream is a facet of the dreamer. In other words, I am the deer, the sofa, the door, the key, the other people in the dream, the bed, the loft, everything, right down to the clock on the mantel and the pictures on the wall. He said I should say, "I am the clock and that means...." He came up with an interpretation of a dream where he was himself (in the dream) and the woman to whom he was making love. Uh, no. Not for me that kind of dream interpretation. I feel like there is something else going on here and I don't think I'm a pregnant doe who can pick locks and will patiently wait until the tenant comes home. Nope, definitely too weird for me.
Anyone else have an interpretation? Where is Joseph when you need him?
That is all. Disperse.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Living up to expectations
I am humbled by all the people who have visited my journal from Russia and the surrounding territories. I hope you found something interesting to read. Thank you so much for visiting and reading.
Я смирил всех людей, которые посетили мой журнал из России и прилегающих территориях. Надеюсь, вы нашли что-то интересное для чтения. Большое спасибо за посещение и чтение.
YA smiril vseh lyudyeĭ, kotorye posetili moĭ zhurnal iz Rossii i prilegayushchih territoriyah. Nadyeyusʹ, vy nashli chto-to interesnoe dlya chteniya. Bolʹshoe spasibo za poseshchenie i chtenie.
I know I have been gone for a while now. I have been busy doing a lot of other things, among them working and revising one of my books to get it read for an agent and publisher. There are times when I have to choose among the things I want to do and the things I have to do to further my writing career. Writing is and always will be my first priority, and things have been very interesting over the past few weeks. The biggest surprise to me is how many people actually read my ramblings here on LiveJournal, and how many of them come from Russia. I even picked up a few new readers from Russia. That is always surprising. A writer never knows how their ideas and characters will translate to different cultures. Finding out there have been hundreds of readers just this morning was surprising and gratifying. One reader from Moscow likened my writing to John Steinbeck. I like Steinbeck's work and have read his books many times, even when I didn't have to read them for school. I find his characters true to life and interesting even when they don't seem interesting to each other. I had no idea Steinbeck was so popular in Russia. It just goes to show that there are more similarities between people than there are differences, no matter where they live.
After the Nobel prize committee chairman criticized American and British writers and enumerated the reasons why they were not good enough to be honored, it seemed as though the countries where English is the first language and where the language flowered, grew and evolved were no longer in the literary loop. There have been criticisms of American literature, which some British writers and publishers have likened to generic, formulaic writing that panders to labels, brands and the semi-literate, but I've found some British literature that is just as generic, formulaic and label-conscious that barely gets to the sixth grade level. I have found that many editors and writers continue to push the belief that all writing should be accessible, which is publishing speak for dumbing down (4-6th grade level). I've found that people will live down to expectations if they can, but that they will also live up to expectations if offered.
I have spent a good deal of time reading and reviewing and critiquing writers from all around the world, most of whom write in English as a second, third or even fourth language. But, the Nobel prize committee chairman aside, English is becoming the universal language. Since I don't write in Russian, except for the translation above, it must have been something in my English writing that has attracted so much attention. I also don't include a lot of pictures or art work, so the writing has to be the draw. For all I know, people are visiting in droves because they heard on the grapevine I mentioned something worth noting, or they have gathered to laugh at my use of language as proof the Nobel committee chairman is right and Americans do not have a clue about what life and living is all about.
Americans have been called clueless when it comes to the problems of living and in some places that is true. I don't think it's true for every American writer because our experiences are just as valid and just as universal as anyone's anywhere in the world. That is nowhere more evident than in the polyglot of books and writers I have recently read. I often search out books from other countries -- France, England, Australia, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, India, Russia, Germany, Greece and Africa, among others -- and I am getting to know Chinese and Japanese writers as well. I don't care where a writer is from only what he has to say. I don't always agree, but I find it fascinating to see how they express themselves about mundane topics like love, family, war, poverty and living. Some of the best books I've read have been from Indian writers and I find their close ties to their religion and how they integrate that into their characters' lives and the story wonderfully refreshing. Their religious beliefs and mythology are an integral part of who they are and how they view the world, and it's not the Bible bashing, proselytizing, convert or die writing that often characterizes other writers including religion in their writing. It is much more subtle and intricately woven into the warp and weft of the fabric of their lives and their writing. There is nothing I dislike more than being beaten over the head with religion or preached at. Like sex, with religion, I don't care what you believe, but don't force it down my throat. I'll respect you and your beliefs as long as you respect mine. Once again, it's a matter of living down to expectations. Writers and people who force their beliefs on others do so because they are afraid people are too stupid to make up their own minds and, like children who refuse to eat, must be force fed.
Not preaching when making a point is a balancing act I am very aware of in writing Among Women. I have a lot of points to make, but I can either tell the reader what to think or allow the characters and the story to do the talking for me, and for the women who shared their stories with me. I've chosen to let the women speak.
It seems strange that after nearly 30 years, their stories are still so fresh and clear in my mind. It isn't as if I think about them every day -- or at least I didn't until I decided to attempt writing our story again. In the past few months, it has been on my mind most of the time because I am still working to get it right -- the balancing act again. I have had a lot of input from first readers who have pointed out areas where I've repeated myself or where things are not as clear as I thought and I take it all under consideration. The story I posted here two years ago is very different from the book that has evolved and continues to evolve. I wonder if it will ever be perfect, but I know it will be the best I can do when it is published. This is a book I am making available to European markets and it is a difficult undertaking because of the jaundiced view Europeans have of American writers. It doesn't matter. Many European and Eastern writers have had a go at the book and the comments have been favorable. Who knows? Maybe it will finally happen that an American writer will be able to stand up and say their book has a universal appeal and not be laughed down by the entrenched international writers who believe only they know how and what to write about living on this planet. I guess they forgot about Steinbeck and Mark Twain and all the writers of note in America and Britain that blazed the trails they now follow with dogged steps.
After all, I am nobody outside of the United States and yet even I have found an audience or two that appreciates what I have to say. They have decided to live up to expectations and give others a chance to share their stories and lives. We are all the same no matter the language we speak or the customs and religions we follow, because at the heart of things we are in the end just people looking for a connection.
Я смирил всех людей, которые посетили мой журнал из России и прилегающих территориях. Надеюсь, вы нашли что-то интересное для чтения. Большое спасибо за посещение и чтение.
YA smiril vseh lyudyeĭ, kotorye posetili moĭ zhurnal iz Rossii i prilegayushchih territoriyah. Nadyeyusʹ, vy nashli chto-to interesnoe dlya chteniya. Bolʹshoe spasibo za poseshchenie i chtenie.
I know I have been gone for a while now. I have been busy doing a lot of other things, among them working and revising one of my books to get it read for an agent and publisher. There are times when I have to choose among the things I want to do and the things I have to do to further my writing career. Writing is and always will be my first priority, and things have been very interesting over the past few weeks. The biggest surprise to me is how many people actually read my ramblings here on LiveJournal, and how many of them come from Russia. I even picked up a few new readers from Russia. That is always surprising. A writer never knows how their ideas and characters will translate to different cultures. Finding out there have been hundreds of readers just this morning was surprising and gratifying. One reader from Moscow likened my writing to John Steinbeck. I like Steinbeck's work and have read his books many times, even when I didn't have to read them for school. I find his characters true to life and interesting even when they don't seem interesting to each other. I had no idea Steinbeck was so popular in Russia. It just goes to show that there are more similarities between people than there are differences, no matter where they live.
After the Nobel prize committee chairman criticized American and British writers and enumerated the reasons why they were not good enough to be honored, it seemed as though the countries where English is the first language and where the language flowered, grew and evolved were no longer in the literary loop. There have been criticisms of American literature, which some British writers and publishers have likened to generic, formulaic writing that panders to labels, brands and the semi-literate, but I've found some British literature that is just as generic, formulaic and label-conscious that barely gets to the sixth grade level. I have found that many editors and writers continue to push the belief that all writing should be accessible, which is publishing speak for dumbing down (4-6th grade level). I've found that people will live down to expectations if they can, but that they will also live up to expectations if offered.
I have spent a good deal of time reading and reviewing and critiquing writers from all around the world, most of whom write in English as a second, third or even fourth language. But, the Nobel prize committee chairman aside, English is becoming the universal language. Since I don't write in Russian, except for the translation above, it must have been something in my English writing that has attracted so much attention. I also don't include a lot of pictures or art work, so the writing has to be the draw. For all I know, people are visiting in droves because they heard on the grapevine I mentioned something worth noting, or they have gathered to laugh at my use of language as proof the Nobel committee chairman is right and Americans do not have a clue about what life and living is all about.
Americans have been called clueless when it comes to the problems of living and in some places that is true. I don't think it's true for every American writer because our experiences are just as valid and just as universal as anyone's anywhere in the world. That is nowhere more evident than in the polyglot of books and writers I have recently read. I often search out books from other countries -- France, England, Australia, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, India, Russia, Germany, Greece and Africa, among others -- and I am getting to know Chinese and Japanese writers as well. I don't care where a writer is from only what he has to say. I don't always agree, but I find it fascinating to see how they express themselves about mundane topics like love, family, war, poverty and living. Some of the best books I've read have been from Indian writers and I find their close ties to their religion and how they integrate that into their characters' lives and the story wonderfully refreshing. Their religious beliefs and mythology are an integral part of who they are and how they view the world, and it's not the Bible bashing, proselytizing, convert or die writing that often characterizes other writers including religion in their writing. It is much more subtle and intricately woven into the warp and weft of the fabric of their lives and their writing. There is nothing I dislike more than being beaten over the head with religion or preached at. Like sex, with religion, I don't care what you believe, but don't force it down my throat. I'll respect you and your beliefs as long as you respect mine. Once again, it's a matter of living down to expectations. Writers and people who force their beliefs on others do so because they are afraid people are too stupid to make up their own minds and, like children who refuse to eat, must be force fed.
Not preaching when making a point is a balancing act I am very aware of in writing Among Women. I have a lot of points to make, but I can either tell the reader what to think or allow the characters and the story to do the talking for me, and for the women who shared their stories with me. I've chosen to let the women speak.
It seems strange that after nearly 30 years, their stories are still so fresh and clear in my mind. It isn't as if I think about them every day -- or at least I didn't until I decided to attempt writing our story again. In the past few months, it has been on my mind most of the time because I am still working to get it right -- the balancing act again. I have had a lot of input from first readers who have pointed out areas where I've repeated myself or where things are not as clear as I thought and I take it all under consideration. The story I posted here two years ago is very different from the book that has evolved and continues to evolve. I wonder if it will ever be perfect, but I know it will be the best I can do when it is published. This is a book I am making available to European markets and it is a difficult undertaking because of the jaundiced view Europeans have of American writers. It doesn't matter. Many European and Eastern writers have had a go at the book and the comments have been favorable. Who knows? Maybe it will finally happen that an American writer will be able to stand up and say their book has a universal appeal and not be laughed down by the entrenched international writers who believe only they know how and what to write about living on this planet. I guess they forgot about Steinbeck and Mark Twain and all the writers of note in America and Britain that blazed the trails they now follow with dogged steps.
After all, I am nobody outside of the United States and yet even I have found an audience or two that appreciates what I have to say. They have decided to live up to expectations and give others a chance to share their stories and lives. We are all the same no matter the language we speak or the customs and religions we follow, because at the heart of things we are in the end just people looking for a connection.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
A time of dreams and fantasies
Movies are compelling with their images and colors brighter than those seen in the living rooms and dens and bedrooms where the movies play. It's no wonder talkies took off the way they did in spite of the people who claimed movies would never take off. In movies there are no limits to the imagination. People have traveled farther in movies than they ever have on land or in sea or air. Makes me wonder how far we would have traveled if the people involved had been as keen to achieve space flight as they did to crack the boundaries of time and space on the big screen.
The first flights of fancy took place around fires in caves and on the plains and in the mountains and hills and at the sea side when night ruled and men huddled close for comfort and protection. Was it a lie that started the first storytellers to spinning fancies and fantasies out of shadow and leaping firelight? Or was it merely wishing to penetrate the darkness and stave off the predators waiting to pounce?
Fiction writers are considered liars, but I don't see us as writers, but rather as dreamers and visionaries. Is it a lie to wish for better or to want to travel beyond the confines of gravity? Anyone capable of such courage and wisdom and ability would have to be special and so the story is born.
I am constantly amazed by the wide variety of stories and movies and even more so by the time it takes to watch someone else's dreams and let my own lie fallow. That's the lure of movies and books, like a come-hither from the king of the leprechauns that leads to wrack and ruin, and the death of dreams.
I'm guilty of following the easy entertainment of the written and acted word, caught like a dazed fool. I'm getting better at discipline, but it's not second nature yet. I'm too much the rebel when it comes to settling down to someone else's rules -- and even my own. I don't like fences even the kind that limit time and spontaneity. Time heals all wounds and wounds all heels so that keeping the roads hot isn't quite so easy any more. It's probably why many take up writing later in life when children are grown and there are hours and time to fill. There's so much to look back on and record, so many thoughts to follow to the rainbow's end and fantasies to to eave from threads into whole cloth. It's also why some begin writing in their youth -- time to fill, dreams to follow and fancies to weave.
I'm in the middle of life, but have always found time to write. Now that there is more time with fewer distractions during summer break, I should be able to finish a couple more books. I write waking and sleeping, but I think for a while I'll leave my working hours for actual work, toiling toward the goal of time to write. There are worse things to do with the time, and I've done most of them. Time to do better and be good for a change or I'll not get a single good night's sleep as stories and characters have found their way into my dreams, luring me with penny bright phrases and evocative prose.
The first flights of fancy took place around fires in caves and on the plains and in the mountains and hills and at the sea side when night ruled and men huddled close for comfort and protection. Was it a lie that started the first storytellers to spinning fancies and fantasies out of shadow and leaping firelight? Or was it merely wishing to penetrate the darkness and stave off the predators waiting to pounce?
Fiction writers are considered liars, but I don't see us as writers, but rather as dreamers and visionaries. Is it a lie to wish for better or to want to travel beyond the confines of gravity? Anyone capable of such courage and wisdom and ability would have to be special and so the story is born.
I am constantly amazed by the wide variety of stories and movies and even more so by the time it takes to watch someone else's dreams and let my own lie fallow. That's the lure of movies and books, like a come-hither from the king of the leprechauns that leads to wrack and ruin, and the death of dreams.
I'm guilty of following the easy entertainment of the written and acted word, caught like a dazed fool. I'm getting better at discipline, but it's not second nature yet. I'm too much the rebel when it comes to settling down to someone else's rules -- and even my own. I don't like fences even the kind that limit time and spontaneity. Time heals all wounds and wounds all heels so that keeping the roads hot isn't quite so easy any more. It's probably why many take up writing later in life when children are grown and there are hours and time to fill. There's so much to look back on and record, so many thoughts to follow to the rainbow's end and fantasies to to eave from threads into whole cloth. It's also why some begin writing in their youth -- time to fill, dreams to follow and fancies to weave.
I'm in the middle of life, but have always found time to write. Now that there is more time with fewer distractions during summer break, I should be able to finish a couple more books. I write waking and sleeping, but I think for a while I'll leave my working hours for actual work, toiling toward the goal of time to write. There are worse things to do with the time, and I've done most of them. Time to do better and be good for a change or I'll not get a single good night's sleep as stories and characters have found their way into my dreams, luring me with penny bright phrases and evocative prose.
Friday, May 21, 2010
This Property is Not Condemned
It’s amazing how much a few pictures on the walls can change the personality and look of a place. Today, it’s my place that looks different. I hung some of my pictures yesterday and today. When I sat down to do some work, I looked up and noticed how the pictures I hung, at least the ones I can see from the sofa, changed the dimensions and feel of the living room and hallway.
I am a bit superstitious about some things, like where I live and how long I get to live there—or in this case, here. Two years seems to be the limit for my tenure anywhere, except when I lived next door to Lon Chaney’s house two years ago. Yes, it has been two years since I moved here and I had lived at the old apartment for three years. It’s not a perfect place to live—the roof leaks in my office and the walls have no insulation—but it has been home, and continues to be home to me. Nowhere is perfect and I’ve lived in a lot of places over the years: Ohio, Tennessee, Florida, Pennsylvania, Texas and here in Colorado most recently. Every time I started hanging things too soon or getting too comfortable, I ended up having to move. It’s part of the reason I didn’t hang my pictures before now, and it’s the same reason I don’t unpack all the boxes. Now, I can.
The idea of buying this cottage from Mark has crossed my mind a few times recently. It would be one certain way of getting Mark to fix the roof and finish connecting the electrical features of the stove: lights and fan. I could also get him to fix the flooring of the cabinets under the sink, the separation between the outside kitchen wall and the front of the house and install a front doorbell. The rest, I would handle. I could use a back door in the office and French doors would be nice. I like having a back entrance in case of fire. A grant should cover having the walls insulated and a solar panel. New bookcases need to be built in the office and washer and dryer hookups would be nice. I’d also like to find out what happened to about two feet of the wall shared between my bedroom and the living room. More shelves for the living room, an entertainment center and maybe a window seat. A platform for my bed and built in night stands, headboard and baseboard would be nice and it would also provide some added storage space and places for more books. I have lots of books.
This place has a lot of potential and now that my worries about how long I can live here are calmed, I can move forward and set down roots. A wrap-around deck for the front of the house with built-in planters, some patio furniture, a grill and some flowers would be nice and there’s plenty of room for a portable greenhouse so I can grow berries and vegetables all the year around. Yes, hanging those pictures and finally finding a spot for Tut and Nefertiti have changed more than the look and feel of this place; they have fired my imagination and made me yearn to put down roots at last and consider buying property, a sort of trial run before I find the land where I can build my cabin and move to my dream house. A little bit at a time, that’s what it takes to write a book and plan a life, especially when property is involved.
I am a bit superstitious about some things, like where I live and how long I get to live there—or in this case, here. Two years seems to be the limit for my tenure anywhere, except when I lived next door to Lon Chaney’s house two years ago. Yes, it has been two years since I moved here and I had lived at the old apartment for three years. It’s not a perfect place to live—the roof leaks in my office and the walls have no insulation—but it has been home, and continues to be home to me. Nowhere is perfect and I’ve lived in a lot of places over the years: Ohio, Tennessee, Florida, Pennsylvania, Texas and here in Colorado most recently. Every time I started hanging things too soon or getting too comfortable, I ended up having to move. It’s part of the reason I didn’t hang my pictures before now, and it’s the same reason I don’t unpack all the boxes. Now, I can.
The idea of buying this cottage from Mark has crossed my mind a few times recently. It would be one certain way of getting Mark to fix the roof and finish connecting the electrical features of the stove: lights and fan. I could also get him to fix the flooring of the cabinets under the sink, the separation between the outside kitchen wall and the front of the house and install a front doorbell. The rest, I would handle. I could use a back door in the office and French doors would be nice. I like having a back entrance in case of fire. A grant should cover having the walls insulated and a solar panel. New bookcases need to be built in the office and washer and dryer hookups would be nice. I’d also like to find out what happened to about two feet of the wall shared between my bedroom and the living room. More shelves for the living room, an entertainment center and maybe a window seat. A platform for my bed and built in night stands, headboard and baseboard would be nice and it would also provide some added storage space and places for more books. I have lots of books.
This place has a lot of potential and now that my worries about how long I can live here are calmed, I can move forward and set down roots. A wrap-around deck for the front of the house with built-in planters, some patio furniture, a grill and some flowers would be nice and there’s plenty of room for a portable greenhouse so I can grow berries and vegetables all the year around. Yes, hanging those pictures and finally finding a spot for Tut and Nefertiti have changed more than the look and feel of this place; they have fired my imagination and made me yearn to put down roots at last and consider buying property, a sort of trial run before I find the land where I can build my cabin and move to my dream house. A little bit at a time, that’s what it takes to write a book and plan a life, especially when property is involved.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Novel Finished; What Next?
The question caught my eye on the forums: I've finished writing, now what?
At first, it seemed a silly question. How could a writer not know what to do next? Are there no classes, no instructions, no innate knowledge gleaned from hanging around and reading and hearing other writers complain, mention, howl and talk about what happens when the rough draft is finished? Then I remember back to the first romance novel I started writing. I never finished the book, not with all the how-to books and critique sessions did I have an idea how to finish the novel. I chose romance because I was told it was the hottest market and more new writers could get published there than in any other genre. It was a bad choice for me. I don't like reading romances and writing one was harder than I thought.
I had a great premise, great characters, snappy dialogue, back story and a plot in my mind, but it would not come together on the page. I never finished it. It's on a floppy disk and on a hard drive in storage. I don't think I'll revisit it. Instead, I worked on writing nonfiction: books, articles, how-tos, interviews, profiles, etc. I didn't revisit the novel until eleven years ago when I got a great idea, having just ended a relationship because the guy wouldn't commit. I turned back to romance. Imagine. Me, writing romance.
I started and finished the novel in two weeks, the first rough draft. What came next was obvious; I moved on to something else. I knew it was too fresh and too raw for me to be objective and I was not ready to face the characters again. A break was in order. Can't edit or rewrite or proofread something that has taken so much energy and time without winding down a bit beforehand.
That's what I told the novelist on the forum who asked, what next? Put the novel away and start something new. Don't even think about the just finished novel. Think about new characters and situations. Take a vacation from that situation and find a new one to concentrate on. Write something else. In a week or two, when you have some distance and objectivity, go back and read.
Print out the rough draft. Pick up a red pen, or whatever color works for you, and begin making notes, marking errors in spelling, syntax, grammar and punctuation, and tightening up or fleshing out wherever it is needed. This is the editing, rewriting and proofing part of writing a novel.
Unless you are the Mozart of prose, there will be blood on the page and plenty of editing and rewriting to do. Go through once, take a breather and work on something else, and then go through again and again until the prose is perfectly polished and ready to send. Anything less is a waste of time.
I also told him that before he begins any work on the novel to celebrate. He started and finished a novel. That is grounds for a really good celebration. Writing a whole novel is a major accomplishment, whether it sees print or not. Few people, me included, have been able to master the craft and, in mastering any craft, there will be mistakes and things that have to be done and redone, but completing a project is a big step in the right direction. The first novel may not be the best, but writing is a process that gets better with time and practice.
That first novel I didn't finish gave way to the second novel that I did finish. It was light years better than the first and I learned a lot along the way. I learned even more when the publisher got hold of it, but that's a tale for a different time. The third novel was better than the second and my fourth novel shows the scars and marks of everything I've learned to date. Each successive novel will be better for the lessons learned before. At least, I can hope and believe and keep writing to find out.
I don't know whether the guy with the first draft of his novel will take my advice, or the advice of several other writers who told him about the same thing, but I hope for the best. If he does nothing with his book and sticks it in a drawer, he has still accomplished more than most people ever do. He started and finished writing a novel. Whether it is good or bad only reviewers and readers will know. Right now, all he knows is that he has earned his typing spurs and will never be the same person -- or writer -- again.
At first, it seemed a silly question. How could a writer not know what to do next? Are there no classes, no instructions, no innate knowledge gleaned from hanging around and reading and hearing other writers complain, mention, howl and talk about what happens when the rough draft is finished? Then I remember back to the first romance novel I started writing. I never finished the book, not with all the how-to books and critique sessions did I have an idea how to finish the novel. I chose romance because I was told it was the hottest market and more new writers could get published there than in any other genre. It was a bad choice for me. I don't like reading romances and writing one was harder than I thought.
I had a great premise, great characters, snappy dialogue, back story and a plot in my mind, but it would not come together on the page. I never finished it. It's on a floppy disk and on a hard drive in storage. I don't think I'll revisit it. Instead, I worked on writing nonfiction: books, articles, how-tos, interviews, profiles, etc. I didn't revisit the novel until eleven years ago when I got a great idea, having just ended a relationship because the guy wouldn't commit. I turned back to romance. Imagine. Me, writing romance.
I started and finished the novel in two weeks, the first rough draft. What came next was obvious; I moved on to something else. I knew it was too fresh and too raw for me to be objective and I was not ready to face the characters again. A break was in order. Can't edit or rewrite or proofread something that has taken so much energy and time without winding down a bit beforehand.
That's what I told the novelist on the forum who asked, what next? Put the novel away and start something new. Don't even think about the just finished novel. Think about new characters and situations. Take a vacation from that situation and find a new one to concentrate on. Write something else. In a week or two, when you have some distance and objectivity, go back and read.
Print out the rough draft. Pick up a red pen, or whatever color works for you, and begin making notes, marking errors in spelling, syntax, grammar and punctuation, and tightening up or fleshing out wherever it is needed. This is the editing, rewriting and proofing part of writing a novel.
Unless you are the Mozart of prose, there will be blood on the page and plenty of editing and rewriting to do. Go through once, take a breather and work on something else, and then go through again and again until the prose is perfectly polished and ready to send. Anything less is a waste of time.
I also told him that before he begins any work on the novel to celebrate. He started and finished a novel. That is grounds for a really good celebration. Writing a whole novel is a major accomplishment, whether it sees print or not. Few people, me included, have been able to master the craft and, in mastering any craft, there will be mistakes and things that have to be done and redone, but completing a project is a big step in the right direction. The first novel may not be the best, but writing is a process that gets better with time and practice.
That first novel I didn't finish gave way to the second novel that I did finish. It was light years better than the first and I learned a lot along the way. I learned even more when the publisher got hold of it, but that's a tale for a different time. The third novel was better than the second and my fourth novel shows the scars and marks of everything I've learned to date. Each successive novel will be better for the lessons learned before. At least, I can hope and believe and keep writing to find out.
I don't know whether the guy with the first draft of his novel will take my advice, or the advice of several other writers who told him about the same thing, but I hope for the best. If he does nothing with his book and sticks it in a drawer, he has still accomplished more than most people ever do. He started and finished writing a novel. Whether it is good or bad only reviewers and readers will know. Right now, all he knows is that he has earned his typing spurs and will never be the same person -- or writer -- again.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Kick Start Your Writing
My astrological chart says I'm not a self starter and I would have to agree. I am a born procrastinator -- on some things, writing being one of them. I love to write and can sit and write for hours on end, usually irritated that I have to get up and tend to nature's call or eat. I have been known to write for 36 hours straight, with nature breaks, of course, and not get tired. I am in the zone. The words are coming. The characters are cooperating and often teaching me things about them I did not know. My fingers are not tired of typing and my backside has not yet reached the leaden stage where getting up is like trying to free my nether regions from a powerful electromagnet -- must be the endorphins and adrenaline coursing through my bloodstream. Everything works fine. I wrote a 100,000-word biography like that once.
Then there are times that I just cannot face the page, knowing that if I do I will be caught in powerful currents and dragged down into the zone where I will not emerge for hours, maybe even a day or two. I cannot afford it. I have to work my day job and do the laundry and bulldoze the detritus from the last writing stint, definitely not a good idea if avoiding surprise visits by the health department.
I do write every day, but not on my works-in-progress. I journal every day, keep up with correspondence and emails, and work, which consists of 8-10 hours of typing dictation, very technical dictation. On the laptop waits my novel or short story waiting to be finished and it calls to me. Like the hunger pangs I ignore when I am in the writing zone, I ignore the siren's call to write until pretty soon, like hunger pangs, the call fades. Then begins the avoidance dance and the procrastination when a deadline looms. It is my fault; I am not a halfway person. I am either all in or all out, my versions of "Do or do not; there is no try," from Yoda to Luke Skywalker. There stands the problem: inability to commit hindquarters to seat in order to write.
Instead, I play a couple rounds of computer games (I prefer skill and knowledge games), work on blog posts, fire off a couple of quick tweets and a run through Facebook to see if I missed anything and then rounds through the various blogs, all while checking email and getting ready for work while sipping a cup of hot green tea that is cooling fast. One job through the widgets to check hits on the blogs and a quick visit to see if anyone has read the latest chapter of the novel I posted on a publishing site. The novel is unfinished and needs a final edit and proofread. It is the reason I have been procrastinating.
I want to finish the novel. Well, it is already finished and needs a little tune-up and loose ends tied. I need to finish the novel before the editor gets to it. I plan to finish the proofreading but, oops, where has time gone. Almost time for work and I still need to eat breakfast (pesky hunger pangs) and take a shower. Maybe later.
Maybe tomorrow.
Maybe this weekend.
By then, a few weeks have passed. Good thing the editor has not contacted me because I have nothing to offer to excuse my inability to kick start my writing engine.
That was yesterday. This morning, I found the answer. I knew it all along because it works for getting the laundry done, the clothes folded and put away, the bed made after the sheets are washed (making the bed every day provides a warm and moist environment for dust mites and other microscopic vermin to grow and procreate -- that is my story and I am sticking to it), the dishes done, the vacuuming finished, exercising and taking out the trash. Once I begin, the rest takes care of itself.
With writing, it is the internal editor that kick starts my engine. One of my critique partners mentioned an extra word in chapter twelve and a comma missing in chapter fifteen. They cannot be allowed to stand or I will forget and the spell check program will not catch them. Into the breach once more I go.
Control-F and type in a few words of the phrase and the extra word is easily found. Next search coordinates go in and, wait a minute, there is something else. How could I have missed that awkward phrasing? Well, that has to go. A few moments later and I am in the zone happily writing and editing and listening to the characters tell me secrets that I dutifully transcribe and polish. The first step is the problem, but the internal editor makes taking the first step effortless.
I do not have the problem in journaling or editing others' work or writing reviews. Deadlines and missing days in the journals keep me honest, but there is no real deadline for a new book or a work-in-progress that has not been contracted. Yes, the problem crops up when I have a long critique and the first glance at the manuscript ends with groaning sighs after glancing at the first page, but the deadline keeps me honest there, too. No, I will just have to rely on the internal editor and program her to whisper errors, typos and misspellings in my ear that she caught on the way out of the zone so that I am anxious one again to go once more into the breach. When that wears thin and begins to go the way of the hunger pangs, I will have to find another way to kick start the writing.
Someone else will have to whisper errors into my ear that engages the internal editor. I doubt I will ever get past the need to clean up mistakes, especially when they are mine.
Then there are times that I just cannot face the page, knowing that if I do I will be caught in powerful currents and dragged down into the zone where I will not emerge for hours, maybe even a day or two. I cannot afford it. I have to work my day job and do the laundry and bulldoze the detritus from the last writing stint, definitely not a good idea if avoiding surprise visits by the health department.
I do write every day, but not on my works-in-progress. I journal every day, keep up with correspondence and emails, and work, which consists of 8-10 hours of typing dictation, very technical dictation. On the laptop waits my novel or short story waiting to be finished and it calls to me. Like the hunger pangs I ignore when I am in the writing zone, I ignore the siren's call to write until pretty soon, like hunger pangs, the call fades. Then begins the avoidance dance and the procrastination when a deadline looms. It is my fault; I am not a halfway person. I am either all in or all out, my versions of "Do or do not; there is no try," from Yoda to Luke Skywalker. There stands the problem: inability to commit hindquarters to seat in order to write.
Instead, I play a couple rounds of computer games (I prefer skill and knowledge games), work on blog posts, fire off a couple of quick tweets and a run through Facebook to see if I missed anything and then rounds through the various blogs, all while checking email and getting ready for work while sipping a cup of hot green tea that is cooling fast. One job through the widgets to check hits on the blogs and a quick visit to see if anyone has read the latest chapter of the novel I posted on a publishing site. The novel is unfinished and needs a final edit and proofread. It is the reason I have been procrastinating.
I want to finish the novel. Well, it is already finished and needs a little tune-up and loose ends tied. I need to finish the novel before the editor gets to it. I plan to finish the proofreading but, oops, where has time gone. Almost time for work and I still need to eat breakfast (pesky hunger pangs) and take a shower. Maybe later.
Maybe tomorrow.
Maybe this weekend.
By then, a few weeks have passed. Good thing the editor has not contacted me because I have nothing to offer to excuse my inability to kick start my writing engine.
That was yesterday. This morning, I found the answer. I knew it all along because it works for getting the laundry done, the clothes folded and put away, the bed made after the sheets are washed (making the bed every day provides a warm and moist environment for dust mites and other microscopic vermin to grow and procreate -- that is my story and I am sticking to it), the dishes done, the vacuuming finished, exercising and taking out the trash. Once I begin, the rest takes care of itself.
With writing, it is the internal editor that kick starts my engine. One of my critique partners mentioned an extra word in chapter twelve and a comma missing in chapter fifteen. They cannot be allowed to stand or I will forget and the spell check program will not catch them. Into the breach once more I go.
Control-F and type in a few words of the phrase and the extra word is easily found. Next search coordinates go in and, wait a minute, there is something else. How could I have missed that awkward phrasing? Well, that has to go. A few moments later and I am in the zone happily writing and editing and listening to the characters tell me secrets that I dutifully transcribe and polish. The first step is the problem, but the internal editor makes taking the first step effortless.
I do not have the problem in journaling or editing others' work or writing reviews. Deadlines and missing days in the journals keep me honest, but there is no real deadline for a new book or a work-in-progress that has not been contracted. Yes, the problem crops up when I have a long critique and the first glance at the manuscript ends with groaning sighs after glancing at the first page, but the deadline keeps me honest there, too. No, I will just have to rely on the internal editor and program her to whisper errors, typos and misspellings in my ear that she caught on the way out of the zone so that I am anxious one again to go once more into the breach. When that wears thin and begins to go the way of the hunger pangs, I will have to find another way to kick start the writing.
Someone else will have to whisper errors into my ear that engages the internal editor. I doubt I will ever get past the need to clean up mistakes, especially when they are mine.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Spring Cleaning
Pages bleed.
All the pages are bleeding. Some are hemorrhaging and some just grazed by the editing pen. On the computer screen, the hemorrhaging is in blue or purple or green, signs of alien intrusion into the fabric and heart of the story. Characters are remodeled. Evocative descriptions are slashed to ribbons. Double-spaced lines flood the once pristine words with criticism and suggestions. Shock sets in. Denial is followed by anger. How dare they? Curiosity peers over the edge, grows bolder and settles in for a long and thorough look until the writer is overwhelmed.
Are they right? Is the main character that unsympathetic? No, someone likes her grit and determination. Another critic sees the brittle facade hiding the fear and confusion. Yes, there's another critic who hates her, who missed the subtle body language: cringing against the wall, spooked by harsh sounds, refusing to meet anyone's eyes.
How much of the burning, pillaging and savaging of editing is personal and how much impersonal and useful? That is the real question.
When writers entrust the work to other writers of different experience and skills, the results are always mixed. It is easy to fall back on the knowledge that every opinion is subjective, colored by personal prejudices. The real problem is finding balance and weeding out the negative from the positive. In the end, it all comes back to the writer.
What is the point of the story? What is the dominant theme? What is the best starting point for the main character's journey? Where is the beating heart of the story? How much should be revealed -- and when?
It is difficult to find balance between your vision and how the results are perceived and received. You are the writer. You get to decide.
Beginning writers will follow every suggestion and change the manuscript to reflect everyone's taste until the essence, the writer's vision, gets lost in a muddle of different styles. It is hard to hold up against so many different, and often more experienced, critics. The critics could be right. The critics could also be wrong. One things cancels out all the rest. No one writer can please everyone all the time. It is impossible. The best one can do is to hold fast to the vision and point of writing the story -- any story.
Ayn Rand had a hard time getting The Fountainhead published. It was long. Some publishers considered it boring and pointless. Others thought it was too radical, too different. Rand stood firm. When a publisher finally contracted the book, editors suggested changes. Rand agreed to remove one character, Roark's girlfriend before Dominique, because it did not advance the story. The rest of the book would be published without any further changes or she would go elsewhere. The book was published without another change.
I remember seeing the massive book on the bookshelves when I was growing up. It was a book club selection. It was so big, taking up a significant space on the shelf. It would be missed. I chose The Graduate instead, switching dust jackets with a less adult book so it wouldn't be discovered. I didn't read Rand's book until many years later.
When I finally read The Fountainhead I was mesmerized. I flew through the story, marveled at the themes and characters and wanted to start all over again when I read the last page. I didn't know that many critics panned the book and said Roark was unsympathetic, too harsh, too unlikable. I liked him immediately. I knew what he felt and wished I had the same strength of character, the same passion and devotion to my own dreams. He touched and awakened feelings and thoughts I didn't realize were there even though I didn't care for his carrot orange hair. One small feature in another wise remarkable character was not enough to ruin my enjoyment. It was insignificant in contrast to everything else about the admirable and stoic Roark. Had I read the savage criticisms before I picked up the book, I would have read The Fountainhead anyway. No one earns the critics' ire or dismissal without arousing my curiosity.
I expected critics to rape and pillage my first published novel, but I didn't expect it with my current book. I had learned and evolved. I was a better writer -- I thought -- and I wrote a story that was close to my heart, born out of my own experiences. How could I go wrong? I forgot the rule. No one can please everyone all the time.
Seeing the bloody comments and suggestions was like starting at square one all over again. The main character isn't sympathetic. She's snooty. Why isn't she afraid? How can she be so cool, calm and collected in her situation? Too much back story. Not enough back story. Too many adjectives. Not enough adjectives. The sentences are too long, too short, too many. Too much dialogue. Not enough dialogue. Too much action. Not enough inner monologue. The comments went from one extreme to the other. I resisted the urge to change everything.
You cannot please everyone all the time.
I chose to focus on spelling mistakes, sneaky words that hid when edited and popped out later during critiques. I made a few changes. Added scenes, took others out, put them in earlier or later. Then I stopped. The story I wrote was getting lost. It didn't help that after over a year of stalling and schedule changes, the publisher decided not to publish the book after all. My confidence was shaken. This book meant so much.
All the books mean so much.
I know I will not please everyone all the time. I can only write the story, fix the typos and grammar mistakes, and let it go.
No matter how many books an author publishes, when the critics descend, confidence wavers and the urge to change everything to fit everyone's suggestions grows stronger. No one can write a book that pleases everyone. It is impossible. The only thing that comes close is an interactive story where the reader gets to choose the paths the characters take. I don't write those kinds of books. I will never please everyone. There's no need to try.
In the end, it all comes back to the writer's vision, the writer's skills and experience and the writer's story. It is like spring cleaning. No two people do it the same way, no matter how they were taught. Editing one's own writing is like spring cleaning. No matter what rules and guidelines were learned, editing is as individual as the writer. Stick to the original vision.
Write the story in your own voice with your own style. Take criticism and suggestions under advisement. Stay true to the course. It may take a while to find a like-minded agent or publisher, but the result will be worth it. Your book may not be The Fountainhead, but it will be memorable and readers, critics and other writers will like it. Even if they don't, it doesn't matter. What matters is writing what moves you.
All the pages are bleeding. Some are hemorrhaging and some just grazed by the editing pen. On the computer screen, the hemorrhaging is in blue or purple or green, signs of alien intrusion into the fabric and heart of the story. Characters are remodeled. Evocative descriptions are slashed to ribbons. Double-spaced lines flood the once pristine words with criticism and suggestions. Shock sets in. Denial is followed by anger. How dare they? Curiosity peers over the edge, grows bolder and settles in for a long and thorough look until the writer is overwhelmed.
Are they right? Is the main character that unsympathetic? No, someone likes her grit and determination. Another critic sees the brittle facade hiding the fear and confusion. Yes, there's another critic who hates her, who missed the subtle body language: cringing against the wall, spooked by harsh sounds, refusing to meet anyone's eyes.
How much of the burning, pillaging and savaging of editing is personal and how much impersonal and useful? That is the real question.
When writers entrust the work to other writers of different experience and skills, the results are always mixed. It is easy to fall back on the knowledge that every opinion is subjective, colored by personal prejudices. The real problem is finding balance and weeding out the negative from the positive. In the end, it all comes back to the writer.
What is the point of the story? What is the dominant theme? What is the best starting point for the main character's journey? Where is the beating heart of the story? How much should be revealed -- and when?
It is difficult to find balance between your vision and how the results are perceived and received. You are the writer. You get to decide.
Beginning writers will follow every suggestion and change the manuscript to reflect everyone's taste until the essence, the writer's vision, gets lost in a muddle of different styles. It is hard to hold up against so many different, and often more experienced, critics. The critics could be right. The critics could also be wrong. One things cancels out all the rest. No one writer can please everyone all the time. It is impossible. The best one can do is to hold fast to the vision and point of writing the story -- any story.
Ayn Rand had a hard time getting The Fountainhead published. It was long. Some publishers considered it boring and pointless. Others thought it was too radical, too different. Rand stood firm. When a publisher finally contracted the book, editors suggested changes. Rand agreed to remove one character, Roark's girlfriend before Dominique, because it did not advance the story. The rest of the book would be published without any further changes or she would go elsewhere. The book was published without another change.
I remember seeing the massive book on the bookshelves when I was growing up. It was a book club selection. It was so big, taking up a significant space on the shelf. It would be missed. I chose The Graduate instead, switching dust jackets with a less adult book so it wouldn't be discovered. I didn't read Rand's book until many years later.
When I finally read The Fountainhead I was mesmerized. I flew through the story, marveled at the themes and characters and wanted to start all over again when I read the last page. I didn't know that many critics panned the book and said Roark was unsympathetic, too harsh, too unlikable. I liked him immediately. I knew what he felt and wished I had the same strength of character, the same passion and devotion to my own dreams. He touched and awakened feelings and thoughts I didn't realize were there even though I didn't care for his carrot orange hair. One small feature in another wise remarkable character was not enough to ruin my enjoyment. It was insignificant in contrast to everything else about the admirable and stoic Roark. Had I read the savage criticisms before I picked up the book, I would have read The Fountainhead anyway. No one earns the critics' ire or dismissal without arousing my curiosity.
I expected critics to rape and pillage my first published novel, but I didn't expect it with my current book. I had learned and evolved. I was a better writer -- I thought -- and I wrote a story that was close to my heart, born out of my own experiences. How could I go wrong? I forgot the rule. No one can please everyone all the time.
Seeing the bloody comments and suggestions was like starting at square one all over again. The main character isn't sympathetic. She's snooty. Why isn't she afraid? How can she be so cool, calm and collected in her situation? Too much back story. Not enough back story. Too many adjectives. Not enough adjectives. The sentences are too long, too short, too many. Too much dialogue. Not enough dialogue. Too much action. Not enough inner monologue. The comments went from one extreme to the other. I resisted the urge to change everything.
You cannot please everyone all the time.
I chose to focus on spelling mistakes, sneaky words that hid when edited and popped out later during critiques. I made a few changes. Added scenes, took others out, put them in earlier or later. Then I stopped. The story I wrote was getting lost. It didn't help that after over a year of stalling and schedule changes, the publisher decided not to publish the book after all. My confidence was shaken. This book meant so much.
All the books mean so much.
I know I will not please everyone all the time. I can only write the story, fix the typos and grammar mistakes, and let it go.
No matter how many books an author publishes, when the critics descend, confidence wavers and the urge to change everything to fit everyone's suggestions grows stronger. No one can write a book that pleases everyone. It is impossible. The only thing that comes close is an interactive story where the reader gets to choose the paths the characters take. I don't write those kinds of books. I will never please everyone. There's no need to try.
In the end, it all comes back to the writer's vision, the writer's skills and experience and the writer's story. It is like spring cleaning. No two people do it the same way, no matter how they were taught. Editing one's own writing is like spring cleaning. No matter what rules and guidelines were learned, editing is as individual as the writer. Stick to the original vision.
Write the story in your own voice with your own style. Take criticism and suggestions under advisement. Stay true to the course. It may take a while to find a like-minded agent or publisher, but the result will be worth it. Your book may not be The Fountainhead, but it will be memorable and readers, critics and other writers will like it. Even if they don't, it doesn't matter. What matters is writing what moves you.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
The lure of money and social position
No, I'm not contemplating a marriage of convenience or a chance to power up. I'm pretty set in my my single ways. I wouldn't say no to an affair or a fling, but not for a while. I'm too busy with writing. However, the topic remains the same: what some women will do to get money and social position. The book is Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen. Haven't heard of that? Well, take a seat and join in.
Many people think that Jane Austen really had to pull a rabbit out of the hat to make it possible for Elinor and Edward to marry. Lucy Steele had been engaged to Edward for years, a secret engagement (Look, your future bride. Sorry, wrong story.) that cost Edward his inheritance which his mother settled irrevocably on his younger brother Robert who was a fop and a dandy. I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. When Edward's sister discovered the truth from Lucy Steele she threw a hissy fit, that's modern American slang for had an attack of hysteria and the vapors. She threw Lucy out of the house, told on Edward and ruined the rest of his life. It was Fanny's fault because she made Lucy believe that Lucy could have any man of prominent social position even without a dowry; she had other attributes that made her an excellent choice -- just not for Edward.
Lucy and Robert had been thrown together while Edward was away on business and Lucy and Robert recognized in each other a soul mate, two people who were interested in social position and lots of money. Lucy engaged Edward's affections when he was relatively young and very inexperienced, but she knew what she was about. Edward stood to inherit a sizable fortune and a prominent social standing. That's all Lucy was interested in. Edward was too kind and honorable to break it off when he realized he was in love with Elinor, but I believe he would have if Elinor had given him any inkling of her affection and attachment to him.
Did Austen pull a rabbit out of the hat to make things come out right at the end? No. She had already foreshadowed the outcome with the fortuitous meetings between Lucy and Robert and their obvious common interests, and she made it abundantly clear that for Lucy the lure was not Edward's love and decency, but his fortune in her sights. When Edward's mother disinherited him, in spite of Lucy's attempt to get Elinor to have Sir John Middleton give Edward the rectory living on his estate, all Lucy was interested in was finding a way to be near people with money and social standing. If she couldn't have them for herself, she would make sure she was in close contact so she would be wined and dined frequently in the style to which she had become accustomed. It was always on Lucy's mind to throw Edward over at the first hint that she could have Robert, and that is what she did. Austen knew Lucy Steele's character better than Edward obviously did. So, no, there was no rabbit pulling, just characters acting true to their natures.
What do you think? Did she plot it carefully or did she stick the right ending on the wrong circumstances?
Saturday, May 08, 2010
Blog Jog Day
COME JOG WITH ME!
May 9 is Blog Jog Day. Come to my site and see what’s new. Then click on the next Blog Jog Day link and see what other awesome sites are out there to explore. The list goes on and on; you don’t want to miss the fun!
In honor of Mother's Day and Blog Jog Day, autographed copies of Past Imperfect are available for $5.00 w/$4.90 for priority mail shipping. In addition, one signed copy of Past Imperfect and Chicken Soup for the Adopted Soul will be given away. To enter, leave a comment on this blog with an email address.
Start by clicking on my site at Red Room
May 9 is Blog Jog Day. Come to my site and see what’s new. Then click on the next Blog Jog Day link and see what other awesome sites are out there to explore. The list goes on and on; you don’t want to miss the fun!
In honor of Mother's Day and Blog Jog Day, autographed copies of Past Imperfect are available for $5.00 w/$4.90 for priority mail shipping. In addition, one signed copy of Past Imperfect and Chicken Soup for the Adopted Soul will be given away. To enter, leave a comment on this blog with an email address.
Start by clicking on my site at Red Room
King of the Hill
The hardest part of writing is giving up your project to an editor, but dealing with criticism from novice writers whose manuscripts and abilities are different and their experience theoretical. At face value, there is a mean-spiritedness that comes with the criticism that is palpable, especially immediately after having gone through their manuscript and pointed out pages of errors: grammar, punctuation, spelling, awkward sentences and lack of clarity. It is like playing King of the Hill and the critic is determined to drag you down. The best thing is to thank them for their time and comments and ignore what amounts to a temper tantrum. It is very hard to do.
The first instinct is to remind them of your background and track record in relation to the lack of their own. It is a petty move and should be avoided at all costs. Deflate their attack with polite civility and move on.
No writer is perfect and writers who have been published tend to be a little more prickly when approached by novices and amateurs. It is human nature, and not the best side of human nature at that. Everyone has an opinion and some people are out for blood. Do not oblige them. Remember that no matter how well the book is written, how beautifully the language flows on the page, someone, and often several someones, are going to most of the book, and often all of it. No one is able to write a book or story that will appeal to everyone. Look at the history of the rivalries between published authors.
J.R.R. Tolkien despised Shakespeare and considered him a hack with no talent, which is why he decided to give the world and Britain his Middle Earth tales so that at Britain would be known for talented writing and writers . . . at least one of them anyway. He was appalled that anyone considered Shakespeare great and thought Shakespeare's writing on a par with limericks and puns. Personally, I'm a fan of Shakespeare. I'm also a fan of Tolkien.
Look through the writings of any published author and you will find other authors they despised. Mark Twain thought Jane Austen should be dug up and beaten with her own bones because her writing was insipid and bloodless. A list of the top fifty rivalries and criticisms of well known writings can be found at Newser.com. It is a revelation.
Criticism is subjective even among editor, publishers and critics and certainly among readers. Writers and people who love vampire fiction have their favorites and cannot be swayed by argument. They like what they like. So, too, with novice writers criticizing a published author's darlings. To allow oneself to become so entrenched in one's own greatness and infallibility is to end up like writers who began penning stories that flowed like the Colorado River during spring thaw and ended several books later with bloated stories in which hundreds of pages that should have been edited out were not. It happens to everyone who attains any degree of fame. Once a writer reaches the pinnacle of his profession, no one can tell him that his prose does not sparkle.
Writers need to open themselves and their work to novices once they stand as King of the Hill, of only to keep them humble and willing to submit to criticism that might help their work. There is truth to be found even in mean-spirited slash and burn criticism. You just have to look harder and be willing to concede that even amateurs have a point once in a while.
The first instinct is to remind them of your background and track record in relation to the lack of their own. It is a petty move and should be avoided at all costs. Deflate their attack with polite civility and move on.
No writer is perfect and writers who have been published tend to be a little more prickly when approached by novices and amateurs. It is human nature, and not the best side of human nature at that. Everyone has an opinion and some people are out for blood. Do not oblige them. Remember that no matter how well the book is written, how beautifully the language flows on the page, someone, and often several someones, are going to most of the book, and often all of it. No one is able to write a book or story that will appeal to everyone. Look at the history of the rivalries between published authors.
J.R.R. Tolkien despised Shakespeare and considered him a hack with no talent, which is why he decided to give the world and Britain his Middle Earth tales so that at Britain would be known for talented writing and writers . . . at least one of them anyway. He was appalled that anyone considered Shakespeare great and thought Shakespeare's writing on a par with limericks and puns. Personally, I'm a fan of Shakespeare. I'm also a fan of Tolkien.
Look through the writings of any published author and you will find other authors they despised. Mark Twain thought Jane Austen should be dug up and beaten with her own bones because her writing was insipid and bloodless. A list of the top fifty rivalries and criticisms of well known writings can be found at Newser.com. It is a revelation.
Criticism is subjective even among editor, publishers and critics and certainly among readers. Writers and people who love vampire fiction have their favorites and cannot be swayed by argument. They like what they like. So, too, with novice writers criticizing a published author's darlings. To allow oneself to become so entrenched in one's own greatness and infallibility is to end up like writers who began penning stories that flowed like the Colorado River during spring thaw and ended several books later with bloated stories in which hundreds of pages that should have been edited out were not. It happens to everyone who attains any degree of fame. Once a writer reaches the pinnacle of his profession, no one can tell him that his prose does not sparkle.
Writers need to open themselves and their work to novices once they stand as King of the Hill, of only to keep them humble and willing to submit to criticism that might help their work. There is truth to be found even in mean-spirited slash and burn criticism. You just have to look harder and be willing to concede that even amateurs have a point once in a while.
Monday, May 03, 2010
Down the Cyberhole
One of the great things about the Internet is being able to connect with people from all walks of life anywhere in the world. The sense of community and knowing that no matter what you've been through we all share the same experiences, or know someone who has, is wonderful. There is a downside.
Such connections and freedom of movement behind the anonymity of the computer, where you can be anyone or any gender you choose, also offers a breeding ground for games and cons. One of these cons has several different forms, but it targets vulnerability and ignorance of what people can be and are capable of perpetrating. It begins with the connection.
A man finding himself with too much time on his hands begins to surf the Internet. He gets involved in forums, bulletin boards and groups to help pass the time. It doesn't take long before he finds an empathetic someone to listen to his troubles and share hers. We are after all not that unique in our troubles and many people are just as willing to commiserate as they are to have someone tell them they're not alone. Beware. Danger, Will Robinson. You are about to fall down the cyberhole into the Con Zone.
It starts innocently enough, sharing tidbits of information and background between the usual getting to know you conversations in chat and email, and now on Skype. Such sharing inevitably leads to a more intimate kind of sharing and often cybersex is the next step, but there is another. Like Wilbur being fattened for the fall when he can be killed and turned into pork chops, bacon, ham, etc., this guy is being prepared for the next phase of the operation.
He's become enamored of his online connection and fancies himself in love, but she's not. She's too busy fattening other marks up for their time to be harvested. Once he's completely hooked, the troubles on her end begin. Her husband is ill or she's divorced and something breaks down, someone needs an operation or some disaster strikes that requires money to fix -- and she doesn't have it. She's barely making it as it is. Gentleman that he is, which is why he was chosen, he will offer to help her out. She refuses at first because she's shocked he would even offer, but this is where she embeds the hook so he won't wriggle free.
She may refuse a couple of times just to make sure he's hooked but good, and then she will reluctantly agree to accept his generosity -- on one condition. She'll pay him back. No matter how long it takes, she will pay him back. She won't and he won't let her. She has enough trouble as it is and he doesn't want to add to her burden. He sends the money and she goes out to celebrate and maybe buy that Prada purse she has wanted for so long. She'll keep tapping him for money until he gets wise or until she knows she's pushed just far enough so he doesn't figure things out. The last phase is the release.
One such con artist staged her online death. It was easy. She had several different email accounts and personae. She'd bump one off when it was time to hit the road so the marks would be sad and grieve for a while, but would forget her eventually. The usual releases include getting married, getting back with an ex-husband or partner, finding religion, etc., etc. There at least 50 ways to leave your cyberlover. Get out the back, Jack. Get a new plan, Stan. No need to be coy, Roy; just get yourself free.
People like that prey on good men and women who are lonely, sad or having trouble with their partner or spouse. They are ripe for conquest and the con artists know just how to find, hook and fleece them. The same pattern is followed every time with a few variations and the end result is always the same.
If you have a friend or relative in a similar situation, let them know what's really happening. They might not believe you at first and will be defensive, but they will figure it out eventually, hopefully before they send their money down the cyberhole with their innocence, generosity and emotions.
One word of advice: There are genuine people out there who find themselves in desperate straits that should not be confused with the cyber cons. It's easy to tell which is which because the genuine people are seldom aggressive about moving from one phase to the next. If someone turns on the waterworks when told that cybersex is cheating on a spouse or partner and then, once the emotional storm is passed, keep putting the cybersex on the table, you're in the clutches of a cyber con. Get to the nearest exit without delay because the cyberwhore is about to turn into a mini disaster movie and you're going to be paying the bills.
That is all. Disperse.
Such connections and freedom of movement behind the anonymity of the computer, where you can be anyone or any gender you choose, also offers a breeding ground for games and cons. One of these cons has several different forms, but it targets vulnerability and ignorance of what people can be and are capable of perpetrating. It begins with the connection.
A man finding himself with too much time on his hands begins to surf the Internet. He gets involved in forums, bulletin boards and groups to help pass the time. It doesn't take long before he finds an empathetic someone to listen to his troubles and share hers. We are after all not that unique in our troubles and many people are just as willing to commiserate as they are to have someone tell them they're not alone. Beware. Danger, Will Robinson. You are about to fall down the cyberhole into the Con Zone.
It starts innocently enough, sharing tidbits of information and background between the usual getting to know you conversations in chat and email, and now on Skype. Such sharing inevitably leads to a more intimate kind of sharing and often cybersex is the next step, but there is another. Like Wilbur being fattened for the fall when he can be killed and turned into pork chops, bacon, ham, etc., this guy is being prepared for the next phase of the operation.
He's become enamored of his online connection and fancies himself in love, but she's not. She's too busy fattening other marks up for their time to be harvested. Once he's completely hooked, the troubles on her end begin. Her husband is ill or she's divorced and something breaks down, someone needs an operation or some disaster strikes that requires money to fix -- and she doesn't have it. She's barely making it as it is. Gentleman that he is, which is why he was chosen, he will offer to help her out. She refuses at first because she's shocked he would even offer, but this is where she embeds the hook so he won't wriggle free.
She may refuse a couple of times just to make sure he's hooked but good, and then she will reluctantly agree to accept his generosity -- on one condition. She'll pay him back. No matter how long it takes, she will pay him back. She won't and he won't let her. She has enough trouble as it is and he doesn't want to add to her burden. He sends the money and she goes out to celebrate and maybe buy that Prada purse she has wanted for so long. She'll keep tapping him for money until he gets wise or until she knows she's pushed just far enough so he doesn't figure things out. The last phase is the release.
One such con artist staged her online death. It was easy. She had several different email accounts and personae. She'd bump one off when it was time to hit the road so the marks would be sad and grieve for a while, but would forget her eventually. The usual releases include getting married, getting back with an ex-husband or partner, finding religion, etc., etc. There at least 50 ways to leave your cyberlover. Get out the back, Jack. Get a new plan, Stan. No need to be coy, Roy; just get yourself free.
People like that prey on good men and women who are lonely, sad or having trouble with their partner or spouse. They are ripe for conquest and the con artists know just how to find, hook and fleece them. The same pattern is followed every time with a few variations and the end result is always the same.
If you have a friend or relative in a similar situation, let them know what's really happening. They might not believe you at first and will be defensive, but they will figure it out eventually, hopefully before they send their money down the cyberhole with their innocence, generosity and emotions.
One word of advice: There are genuine people out there who find themselves in desperate straits that should not be confused with the cyber cons. It's easy to tell which is which because the genuine people are seldom aggressive about moving from one phase to the next. If someone turns on the waterworks when told that cybersex is cheating on a spouse or partner and then, once the emotional storm is passed, keep putting the cybersex on the table, you're in the clutches of a cyber con. Get to the nearest exit without delay because the cyberwhore is about to turn into a mini disaster movie and you're going to be paying the bills.
That is all. Disperse.
Friday, April 30, 2010
The Sounds of Life
Sounds permeate the world, the sounds of electric and electronic machines and components that hum, whir and buzz in the background. It's the sound of electricity. There is also the sound of air moving through furnace ducts and the rustle of papers in the air's path. Phones ring, buzz and jingle, playing snippets of music. Computer twing, twang and ting with the sound of busy applications. But the music is missing from my life. I didn't realize how silent my world has been lately until I heard Dr. Walter Bishop on Fringe singing a few lines from Tears for Fears: Head Over Heels.
A couple of lines, a few words and I was off on the hunt because I couldn't remember the song or who sang it. I came across Whitesnake and remembered songs I loved from their albums. I downloaded a few and kept looking because it didn't sound right and then I came across Tears for Fears and downloaded the song I wanted. The air is filled with music now as I type, my body moving to the beat and my heart light and gay from the exercise of lungs and vocal cords singing along. I've missed this. How much I've missed I didn't realize until I heard Walter sing (baritone and badly) and my heart and mind and ears called out for more.
I sometimes think life is better with a sound track, a real life version of the Buffy episode, Once Again With Feeling, and Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog. I need music to feed my soul and heart as much as my body needs food, and I've neglected both for too long. Music for dancing. Music for cleaning house. Music for doing laundry. Music for taking out the trash. Music for life. There should be music. I should have caught the hint from the Bones episode where a young Amish man on rumspringa considered living in the English world so he can play the piano, bring forth music into his silent and plain world where electricity and computers don't exist to provide that half-heard counterpoint to life. That young Amish man broke his hands so he could no longer play the piano because he decided to go back to his Amish life, back to the silence, for the girl he loved, giving up the music that filled his soul for the woman who filled his heart.
Whether it's Whitesnake, the best of the Beatles, Rhythm & Blues, Classical or good old Rock & Roll, and everything in between, I know now I need music, the music that fills my soul, makes my heart swell with joy, rushes like spring melt beneath my skin and along my nerve and gives my lungs and vocal cords a workout. I need music even more than food and much more than the silence that helps me concentrate when I write. I know why Stephen King weaves music throughout his writing; it is as much a part of him as grammar, punctuation and the fantasy of other lives. Music is life. Music is movement. Music is the sound track of the heart and soul.
A couple of lines, a few words and I was off on the hunt because I couldn't remember the song or who sang it. I came across Whitesnake and remembered songs I loved from their albums. I downloaded a few and kept looking because it didn't sound right and then I came across Tears for Fears and downloaded the song I wanted. The air is filled with music now as I type, my body moving to the beat and my heart light and gay from the exercise of lungs and vocal cords singing along. I've missed this. How much I've missed I didn't realize until I heard Walter sing (baritone and badly) and my heart and mind and ears called out for more.
I sometimes think life is better with a sound track, a real life version of the Buffy episode, Once Again With Feeling, and Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog. I need music to feed my soul and heart as much as my body needs food, and I've neglected both for too long. Music for dancing. Music for cleaning house. Music for doing laundry. Music for taking out the trash. Music for life. There should be music. I should have caught the hint from the Bones episode where a young Amish man on rumspringa considered living in the English world so he can play the piano, bring forth music into his silent and plain world where electricity and computers don't exist to provide that half-heard counterpoint to life. That young Amish man broke his hands so he could no longer play the piano because he decided to go back to his Amish life, back to the silence, for the girl he loved, giving up the music that filled his soul for the woman who filled his heart.
Whether it's Whitesnake, the best of the Beatles, Rhythm & Blues, Classical or good old Rock & Roll, and everything in between, I know now I need music, the music that fills my soul, makes my heart swell with joy, rushes like spring melt beneath my skin and along my nerve and gives my lungs and vocal cords a workout. I need music even more than food and much more than the silence that helps me concentrate when I write. I know why Stephen King weaves music throughout his writing; it is as much a part of him as grammar, punctuation and the fantasy of other lives. Music is life. Music is movement. Music is the sound track of the heart and soul.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Dancing Barefoot Among Goats
It was the first book that was all mine and I slept with it under my pillow. All the other books in the house belonged to Mom or were shared with my brother and sister, neither of whom cared anything about reading or books, not then, not when I was ten and they were eight and five. My sister was more interested in clothes and accessories and my brother in playing outside barefoot and getting dirty and into trouble. Only I cared about the books, the children’s library of fairy tales that I absorbed as a sponge absorbs liquid. Unlike the sponge, I didn’t let go of what I absorbed, carrying the stories with me to regale the neighborhood kids with tales of Ice Queens, adventure, sword fights and magical animals under curses who talked. The book I received from my aunt when I was ten was mine.
The book arrived in time for my birthday and a week long bout of measles that kept me confined to my bed. I opened the package and uncovered Heidi by Johanna Spyri, diving into the world of the angry Grandfather forced to take in Heidi, the five-year-old child of his dead, disinherited daughter. Aunt Dete, who trudged up the mountain to Grandfather’s hut, unceremoniously informed him that Heidi was his responsibility; she had better things to do with her life and Heidi was not an asset. Meanwhile, Heidi shed her clothes down to her shift and ran barefoot through the soft alpine grass, as free and happy as only a five-year-old child can be. I was caught in Heidi’s spell, eating golden toasted goat cheese on bread with a chair for a table and a stool for a seat. Nestled in sweet-smelling hay, I gazed in wonder up at the star-filled sky in the black sky visible through the window, lulled to sleep by soft alpine breezes scented with edelweiss. Johanna Spyri shared a new world with me, a world I could visit any time I wished in my very own book.
Owning my first book was important to me. It’s still important as anyone visiting my cottage can quickly see. Stacks of books cover most of the flat surfaces and fill boxes in my office beneath bookshelves groaning under the weight of words and ideas. Heidi was very different fare for me. I cut my teeth on Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and thrilled to Ivanhoe’s adventures. Outside of the fairy tales I collected, and continue to collect, the only children’s books I read were the ones assigned by teachers unfamiliar with my particular taste in literature. Johanna Spyri’s classic tale was a children’s book only because I was a child when it was given to me. I’ve read it over many times since those long ago days stuck in bed, my skin itching like mad from measles and unable to scratch.
In Heidi’s world, I found a soul mate in the little dark-haired girl entranced by new experiences and open to adventure, a little girl unafraid of anything but being cut off from what she loved most. In Herr Sesemann’s house, among the rich furnishing and sumptuous meals, Heidi longed for Grandfather, blind Grandmother, Peter and the goats, but she wasn’t afraid. She knew the change wasn’t permanent. She could go home whenever she wanted. The only thing Heidi feared was being exiled from the mountains, never to sleep in the sweet-smelling hay beneath the glittering stars and run barefoot with Peter and the goats.
Heidi’s nightmares and exile ended when she returns to the Grandfather’s hut. There she remains, running barefoot with the goats in her shift and eating toasted golden cheese on bread and drinking goat’s milk at the table the Grandfather built for her. With Clara beside her in the hayloft, they fall asleep to the lullaby of pine trees sighing from the soft caress of alpine breezes laden with the scent of edelweiss.
When I read Heidi, or any book, I travel beyond the confines of my responsibilities and chores to different worlds in the care of skillful writers painting dreams with words. I see through eyes not so different from mine, except in color or shape, and inhabit a world where anything can happen. The views are not always so beautiful or so rare, and all the people aren’t good or kind or generous, but they are worth visiting, worth experiencing even second-hand. Books are open doors to realms of possibility that open the mind and the heart to show that no matter who we are or where and how we live, we are connected. Books change us and prove we are not alone, provided we let down our guards and welcome dark-haired orphans dancing barefoot in their shifts on the mountainside among the goats.
The book arrived in time for my birthday and a week long bout of measles that kept me confined to my bed. I opened the package and uncovered Heidi by Johanna Spyri, diving into the world of the angry Grandfather forced to take in Heidi, the five-year-old child of his dead, disinherited daughter. Aunt Dete, who trudged up the mountain to Grandfather’s hut, unceremoniously informed him that Heidi was his responsibility; she had better things to do with her life and Heidi was not an asset. Meanwhile, Heidi shed her clothes down to her shift and ran barefoot through the soft alpine grass, as free and happy as only a five-year-old child can be. I was caught in Heidi’s spell, eating golden toasted goat cheese on bread with a chair for a table and a stool for a seat. Nestled in sweet-smelling hay, I gazed in wonder up at the star-filled sky in the black sky visible through the window, lulled to sleep by soft alpine breezes scented with edelweiss. Johanna Spyri shared a new world with me, a world I could visit any time I wished in my very own book.
Owning my first book was important to me. It’s still important as anyone visiting my cottage can quickly see. Stacks of books cover most of the flat surfaces and fill boxes in my office beneath bookshelves groaning under the weight of words and ideas. Heidi was very different fare for me. I cut my teeth on Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and thrilled to Ivanhoe’s adventures. Outside of the fairy tales I collected, and continue to collect, the only children’s books I read were the ones assigned by teachers unfamiliar with my particular taste in literature. Johanna Spyri’s classic tale was a children’s book only because I was a child when it was given to me. I’ve read it over many times since those long ago days stuck in bed, my skin itching like mad from measles and unable to scratch.
In Heidi’s world, I found a soul mate in the little dark-haired girl entranced by new experiences and open to adventure, a little girl unafraid of anything but being cut off from what she loved most. In Herr Sesemann’s house, among the rich furnishing and sumptuous meals, Heidi longed for Grandfather, blind Grandmother, Peter and the goats, but she wasn’t afraid. She knew the change wasn’t permanent. She could go home whenever she wanted. The only thing Heidi feared was being exiled from the mountains, never to sleep in the sweet-smelling hay beneath the glittering stars and run barefoot with Peter and the goats.
Heidi’s nightmares and exile ended when she returns to the Grandfather’s hut. There she remains, running barefoot with the goats in her shift and eating toasted golden cheese on bread and drinking goat’s milk at the table the Grandfather built for her. With Clara beside her in the hayloft, they fall asleep to the lullaby of pine trees sighing from the soft caress of alpine breezes laden with the scent of edelweiss.
When I read Heidi, or any book, I travel beyond the confines of my responsibilities and chores to different worlds in the care of skillful writers painting dreams with words. I see through eyes not so different from mine, except in color or shape, and inhabit a world where anything can happen. The views are not always so beautiful or so rare, and all the people aren’t good or kind or generous, but they are worth visiting, worth experiencing even second-hand. Books are open doors to realms of possibility that open the mind and the heart to show that no matter who we are or where and how we live, we are connected. Books change us and prove we are not alone, provided we let down our guards and welcome dark-haired orphans dancing barefoot in their shifts on the mountainside among the goats.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Pseudo-intellectual Wit
I haven't written anything here of any real substance for a while since I've been spending all my time writing on other blogs that concentrate on writing and books. Bad Fixnwrtr. I have also spent a fair amount of time on Facebook, although not for the games and apps, the way some people do. I have had a good time reconnecting with family and friends and even friends from high school, which is where the problem obviously begins.
I posted my wedding pictures because some of the old gang from West High were in the photos and we had a good time swapping stories and reminiscing. There were some interesting comments and some very surprising ones, especially from an old friend who was at the wedding and reminded me of an incident that nearly made the reason for getting married null and void. Long story. I may write about it some other time.
What I didn't know what that one of my cousins, the only one older than I on Mom's side of the family, took offense at me posting the pictures. Why? Because I am no longer married to the man (boy at that time). I guess I should have checked with her first.
It all started today with a comment on Facebook to take a look at a video her son, my second cousin Matt, posted on his page about his father, her ex-husband, the man after over twenty years she still refers to as a**hole. I was on the work computer, which does not allow me to view videos, and only had time for a quick message. Why do you let it get to you? I unknowingly unleashed an avalanche of venom and name calling (from her) with my simple question.
Laura's ex-husband, Mike Vanderboegh, is heavily involved in the Alabama State Militia and has been written up in newspapers and magazines (the glossy national kind) for years. He's also been on TV quite a few times because of his far right stance on gun control and politics. He's a**hole. It doesn't bother me that he's so well known in some circles. It's his life and he can live it however he chooses. It's interesting (barely) and I know him, so there is a connection, but not a strong one. I think the Icelandic volcanoes blowing their tops is more interesting, but that's just me.
At any rate, the name calling rained down like volcanic ash. Good thing I don't sweat the small stuff, and this was small stuff. I've been called names by a lot of people and they did a much better job. What they didn't do was upset me. Laura didn't upset me either. I never get upset when someone's true colors and deepest thoughts come hurling to the surface and out of their mouths -- or keyboards. It's just words, and not very important words.
So, to make Laura happy, I've decided to share the video. This is Laura's ex-husband Mike Vanderboegh talking about open carrying of weapons, the same man she cuckolded with her present husband . . . and he's the a**hole.
The pseudo-intellectual not wit would be me, according to cousin Laura.
That is all. Disperse.
I posted my wedding pictures because some of the old gang from West High were in the photos and we had a good time swapping stories and reminiscing. There were some interesting comments and some very surprising ones, especially from an old friend who was at the wedding and reminded me of an incident that nearly made the reason for getting married null and void. Long story. I may write about it some other time.
What I didn't know what that one of my cousins, the only one older than I on Mom's side of the family, took offense at me posting the pictures. Why? Because I am no longer married to the man (boy at that time). I guess I should have checked with her first.
It all started today with a comment on Facebook to take a look at a video her son, my second cousin Matt, posted on his page about his father, her ex-husband, the man after over twenty years she still refers to as a**hole. I was on the work computer, which does not allow me to view videos, and only had time for a quick message. Why do you let it get to you? I unknowingly unleashed an avalanche of venom and name calling (from her) with my simple question.
Laura's ex-husband, Mike Vanderboegh, is heavily involved in the Alabama State Militia and has been written up in newspapers and magazines (the glossy national kind) for years. He's also been on TV quite a few times because of his far right stance on gun control and politics. He's a**hole. It doesn't bother me that he's so well known in some circles. It's his life and he can live it however he chooses. It's interesting (barely) and I know him, so there is a connection, but not a strong one. I think the Icelandic volcanoes blowing their tops is more interesting, but that's just me.
At any rate, the name calling rained down like volcanic ash. Good thing I don't sweat the small stuff, and this was small stuff. I've been called names by a lot of people and they did a much better job. What they didn't do was upset me. Laura didn't upset me either. I never get upset when someone's true colors and deepest thoughts come hurling to the surface and out of their mouths -- or keyboards. It's just words, and not very important words.
So, to make Laura happy, I've decided to share the video. This is Laura's ex-husband Mike Vanderboegh talking about open carrying of weapons, the same man she cuckolded with her present husband . . . and he's the a**hole.
The pseudo-intellectual not wit would be me, according to cousin Laura.
That is all. Disperse.
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