Learning

I never want to stop learning. Years ago, I bought a copy of The Iliad in ancient Greek, and I fully intend on reading it someday. I may be a hundred and ten, but I'll get there. Growing up all over the world gave me educational advantages most kids don't have. While I attended traditional schools, some of my best education came from outside the classroom. I think that's why I'm not wedded for life to traditional learning models.

When the architect daughter was in lower school, she wasn't showing her math work step by step.Teachers frown on this. I realized, after having a very rational discussion with her, that her mind didn't need those steps to solve math problems. She was bored by the tedious, lengthy process, since she knew the answers (and they were correct). The librarian daughter was a hands-on learner. If she could hold it, make it, see it, she had that for life. Step-by-step worked well for her.

Just as there is no one correct way to learn, since we are all uniquely individual, there's no one way to write a book, a short story, or a poem. We each need to find our own process, the one that fits our creative process. I've found some "how to write" books wonderfully helpful (i.e. Vogler's THE WRITER'S JOURNEY), and others are simply torture. I did a one-day seminar with a well known agent who has written a couple of "how-to" books, and they have simply and effectively crippled my writing process. I came out of the session feeling like a failure and paralyzed by not being able to create the way he said we writers should.

Horse feathers. Learning to put words down in tangible form is intrinsically tied to how we learn any other skill. It's your process, so you need to figure out what works for you. Are you a plotter, with detailed chapter outlines? Good for you! Or is half the fun figuring it out as you go along? Stick with it if it's giving you joy. Don't let anyone mess with your head.

It's the only way you'll get where you want to go.

Farewell, Coach Taylor and Tami, Tim and Tyra, Matt and Julie...

"Friday Night Lights" has now gone, officially, to the great DVD boxed set in the sky.  Five years of great characters, super storytelling, and a real Texas locale left memories about people who aren't real, but who felt real.  I'm going to miss it horribly. Aside from "Upstairs, Downstairs" (the original) and "Poldark," (both on PBS), I can't remember being so engrossed and enamoured of fictional characters on the screen. FNL did what a great story does: it focused on a few characters, their flaws, their fears, their failures, and let us feel how they felt as they struggled to succeed. 

At its heart, it was about a marriage and family.  The Taylor family was no less important than the football team family or the Saracen family.  They all got equal air time.  When it became clear that Matt's grandmother was losing it, we understood his anguish and inability to know the right thing to do.  Tami Taylor's fights with her daughter Julie are echoed every day in real houses.  Yet the characters and their lives were all strung together with love, and we, the viewers, knew it. No matter how bad things got (and they got pretty ugly sometimes), we were sure of the love, even if the characters seemed to have forgotten about it.

Love always triumphed. How can a series based on that fundamental go wrong? FNL did everything right, and the last episode was the best of all.  Farewell, Dillon, Texas. I wouldn't want to live there, but I loved being with you for one Friday night every week.

Following your gut

Sometimes people try to do the right thing. A lot depends on what it is. Friends and family get the first priority, but then it gets dicey. And sometimes, they just don't know what to do, so they do nothing.

I was listening to the Jaycee Dugard interview, and what struck me was how the two campus security ladies followed their instincts when they saw Phillip Garrito, with two young girls, on campus. He wasn't breaking any laws, but they just felt something was off kilter. So they did some background on him, and as a result, they started the ball rolling that lead to the rescue of Jaycee.

They did something when their instincts warned the situation wasn't right. How many of us would do the same? Once, several years ago, I was leaving the mall when I saw a young teenaged couple arguing quite loudly. The guy was much larger than the girl, and he kept grabbing her and jerking her back when she tried to leave. I watched from my rearview mirror, then turned around and drove up beside them. I told myself that I would want someone to intervene if one of my daughters were in trouble in public, so I rolled down my window and asked if she was okay.

I got a typical snippy teenager response, which didn't bother me one bit. I hung around them a few more minutes, and the situation seemed defused, so I finally took off. At least they weren't yelling, and he wasn't grabbing her by then.

I have made a pact with myself. I don't care if I'm called a busybody. If I see something my gut tells me is dicey, I'm going to do something about it. If it’s nothing, great, I’m happy. If not, well, I won’t have to worry that I could have helped someone and didn’t.

I couldn’t live with that.

Peas and Pages

The garden, sigh. Big sigh. I doubt I'll see a tomato or an ear of corn. This time it's not squirrels or bugs. (Actually, ants destroyed the zucchini.) I think it's just a long stretch of horrific heat and no rain. Watering just didn't cut it. Then the torrential downpours beat everything to pulp. Today I harvested all of four string beans. All that work for four string beans, another big sigh.

It's like a nonproductive writing day. Hours at the keyboard. Working through the rough parts, you hope. Trying to keep the momentum going, praying you'll salvage something after all those pages. Then you read it back the next morning and realize there is exactly one four sentence paragraph worth keeping.

On the up side, that's one good paragraph. On the down side, it's just a single paragraph after all that work.

I think I'm going to call the squirrels to finish off what's left of the garden, then I'm getting back to work on the WIP.

Cake Pans

Yes, that is correct. The topic is cake pans. I am the new owner of a pair of bright red Kitchen Aid silicon(e?)cake pans. They wiggle like Jello, but boy howdy, do they look cool.
I couldn't wait to try them out, so, because they're red, I made a red velvet cake. I couldn't wait to get them out of the oven and shake the cooked layers, effortlessly, onto the cake plate.

You see, I've been using a set of cake pans I received as a shower gift lo these many years ago. Many, many, many years ago. I know all their quirks, how much longer they need to stay in the oven with certain types of batter, and how hard it is to remove the cake in perfect shape. (The nonstick surface bit the dust eons ago.)

Flicking my red velvet cake loose from the sides of my new red, space-aged caked pans, I made a fatal mistake. I flipped without checking. And lost a hunk of cake stuck to the bottom of the pan. Yikes.

I gazed with fond nostalgia at my battered old pans. It's like using Word Perfect. I knew all the keyboard shortcuts without having to think of them. But now WP is anathema, and I have had to brave the new-to-me world of Word. I have navigated the basics. But my heart belongs to Word Perfect.

The next cake is going in the old pans, just because I can. Take that, Word!

Juries

Many years ago (and no, I'm not saying how many), I took a two week course for trial lawyers who had been in practice a minimum of five years. We were videotaped in the courtroom, trying cases in front of mock juries. Intense, effective, and an eye-opener in how we were perceived as trial attorneys by jurors, the course provided one huge eye-opener for me. A microphone was placed in the jury room, and we lawyers were able to hear the jurors discuss the cases we presented.

Thus was born my belief in the jury system. In jurors, to be specific. The jurors I heard showed such commonsense, I was in awe. They cut through the razzzle-dazzle, the bull pucky, the grandstanding, to dig out the salient points. This may not happen in every jury deliberation, but I'm sticking to my faith in the jury system, no matter what.

And that's why, when a supposedly slam-dunk case is lost, I blame the lawyers for not providing the jury with the evidence. And that's all there is to it.

The Fourth

When I was a kid, we always went to see the post fireworks today. Not only were they pretty great, because who blows up things better than the military, but they were also a rare event. We didn't have fireworks after a ball game, or in victory lane at the end of a Nascar race. So, every time I see fireworks dotting the skies, I think of the Fourth of July. That's all there is to it.

Often, on military bases, the Fourth is a time when families and the public are invited to climb through a tank or shimmy down a narrow ladder into the bowls of a ship. I even got to sit in the cockpit of a huge plane once, I don't know its proper designation. It humanized where our daddies worked, and we knew they didn't just sit at a desk like other fathers. Not that we knew other kids with parents with normal jobs, because we went to school on base most of the time, and our friends' fathers did what ours did. Unless they were generals or admirals, then they rode desks.

Also, a bit of advice should you find yourself living on a military base. Don't let your little terrier attack the commanding general's boxer, and win the fight. Not good for your career.

Enjoy today eceryone, and remember why we celebrate it. Freedom is too precious to take for granted.

Thank a Teacher

My eldest is home for the holiday weekend, and we were having a quick lunch at a local hangout. Three people came in after us and took the booth behind ours. Immediately, my daughter said "I think that's my eighth grade Algebra teacher!" Then she came up with her name.

Mind you, this child is now finishing up her master's degree at the University of South Carolina. She took two years off between her B.A. and starting her MLIS. She had this teacher a few years back, about eleven. So she got up, asked if this woman was her math teacher,(she was), and proceeded to tell her she was the only teacher to ever make math comprehensible to her.

I could tell the teacher was pleased, and she thanked my daughter for saying so. I hope she knows what an impact she's had on the lives of her students. At least she does for one.

Although my daughter still hates math.

The Future of Books

I just listened in on an O'Reilly Media web seminar (webinar?) on the future of publishing digitally. All I can say is, I'm flat on the floor, panting for breath, and wondering how my life has crossed into this insane publishing world. I mean, I started writing with pen and ink (and now and then, pencil!) on paper, which I would then painstakingly type up on a manual typewriter, using carbon paper so I'd have a copy. Lord help me with correcting typos. The day Wite-Out was invented, I wanted to kiss the woman's feet who came up with the formula. (Her son was one of the Monkees, I understand. But I digress.)

Now the newest thing is constantly changing content, so the latest information is constantly streaming onto the page. Videos. Animation. Web links. Highlight a character's name, and her bio pops up in a separate box with all the relevant info so you can remember who she is. Videos inserted in text. Read a paragraph about the Battle of Hastings, and you can see a quick reenactment on video! Oh my stars. I'm ready to run for the hills, where I will live without running water, electricity, or gas generators.

Okay, I take back the last sentence. After Hurricane Isabelle struck, we had no power, no hot water, no laundry, we had to boil water to drink, and NO ICE for ten days. Primitve living does not agree with me. Especially when there's no power to plug in the laptop and iPad.

Part of me is scared silly of all these new applications ready to juice up the plain text page. Another part of me says, hey, it's just like redesigning the Mustang. They made it better, hotter, faster, and sure enough, safer. Roll with it. Get the lingo down. Once that hurdle is behind me, I can see all kinds of possibilites for authors on the Web.

I will not be a stick in the mud, I promise.

Back in the Saddle again...

Now that I'm off my high horse, (see prior posting "Messy"), I have to confess I came home from the apartment search and scrubbed every inch of our several bathrooms from top to bottom, with bleach! All it did was make my eyes sting and satisfy my compulsion to make something really, really clean. Guess that was enough, because today The WIP is top of the list.

Which is a good thing. The cat is happy I'm back at my desk because it means my lap awaits for several hours, and I'm happy, too. Sometimes it's hard to pick up the threads you've steadily been weaving, and other times, that step away provides clarity. As in, what in the name of all that's sacred was I thinking when I wrote that??? When that happens, I'm grateful because it means I don't have even bigger snarls to pick through. Stop that puppy in its tracks!

Reading aloud is the greatest advice I can give a new writer. First, you see the typos more clearly. (Or not, in my case.) Next, you hear the awkward phrasing. Third, little mistakes jump out. Did I make his eyes blue in the last chapter, and now they're brown? Yikes. For me, I am reading as a reader by the third or so run-through. Am I still interested in this story, these characters? If not, why not?

Time to get the fingers on the keyboard. My bleach-pruned, poor little fingers.

Messy

We've been apartment hunting for our newly minted architect, who has a job! Yes, a job, in this economy. While she's out of town, we've been checking out some places with a realtor. All I can say is, does no one clean up their homes? It was all I could do to to not grab the vacuum cleaner, duster, and start making beds.

I am not a clean freak, I swear. General living mess doesn't get my knickers in a twist. But good gracious, who taught these people how to keep house? I'm not talkimg a few dishes in the sink. Is this general lack of respect for the home environment indicative of our society? Do we just not care on a general basis? Is home not where our hearts are anymore?

I'm probably over-reacting. I keep telling myself that. But I don't think so.

America, clean up, starting at home. There, I've shown my bossy-pants side. Why? Because Mama said so.

Finding Time

Despite a soaking rain the other night, the garden is once again looking like my dry skin in winter. Minus the hairy legs. (Who shaves her legs in the winter? I mean, really . . .) I'll water today, since rain isn't on the TV radar, but I can't complain too much. Last winter,I was clinging to memories of long, hot days for dear life.

I'm peeping over the edge of my iPad to see my shiny pink toe nails. We girls have a tradition in our house, the toes get painted for sandal wear at the start of summer, then all bets are off. Back to work time hits when the sandals are shoved into their boxes. The real problem for me is, the WIP needs work now. And the distractions are, to be understated, crazy.

How to keep focused as a writer when outside forces, family, gardens, etc., grab your painted toes and drag you down the equivalent of a primrose path? Heaven knows, I'm no expert. I've come to realize that life is messy, we do the best we can, and pray that we get as much crammed into it as possible. I don't intend on making my exit in a quiet manner. I'll probably be complaining "I have too much to do to put up with this nonsense."

The book needs a higher place on the priority list. I don't want to look back and wonder why I left so many half-finished manuscripts.

Monuments to the Dead and Injustice

Found this on Yahoo - it's the stele for a gladiator from the Black Sea region of Turkey who ended up dead as the result of the "cunning and treachery" of the referee, the summa radis, I believe is the term. Not only is it remarkably clear and unscarred by 1800 years of natural elements, but it also tells a story. The dead gladiator defeated his opponent and stepping back, waited for the verdict from the crowd as to the fate of the other fighter. However, evidently the ref ruled that the man on his butt lost his footing, so he got his weapons back, the fight started over, and the stele marks what was a bad deal for the first winner of the fight. He lost the second go-round.

This monument to injustice survived 1800 years. Do we know anything else about these men? No. Still, doesn't the story resonate even today? Bad calls in sports still happen, but lives aren't lost as a result. Maybe champtionships are lost, and that's a bummer, but a tragedy? Maybe for diehard fans.

Still, think about the bad call in battle, one that costs men their lives. (Pickett's Charge, anyone?) The wrong decision from a biased judge. (*caveat, none of the ones I know.*). The deliberate falsification of evidence. Malfeasance by elected officials that impacts a whole community. We can all think of injustices that happen on a small, local level in this world. Yet will anyone know those story thousands of years from now?

This one lone stele commemorates a death that shouldn't have happened, calls the ref a liar to his face, and manages to engage us artistically as well. That's the sort of monument we don't see anymore.

On the other hand, what if the call was the right one, and the stele is sour grapes? We'll never know.

How does she look?

I normally eat my noon time sandwich on the patio, but it was looking ominous today. So I sat down to watch the episode of RUBY (love her) on DVR, and instead, I got How Do I Look? Why oh why do all the women on this show who are supposedly fashionistas look as frumpy, or worse than, the women in need of new wardrobes? Trashy is another good word. The whole point of the show is that looks and clothes define the person. Usually there's an emotional component to the "bad" dresser. Yuck. What a stretch. And talk about cruel! Some of the so-called friends are totally unfiltered.

The worst part is, the final product isn't so wonderful, at least the ones I've seen. Why do women allow themselves to be tortured like this? You don't see men going through the clothes grinder on TV. Judging others is almost a national past time, and it's not something wonderful.

Be who you are, now that's a show I'd watch. Be the best you want to be. And above all, be happy.

Dump the "friends" who tear you down, before you do anything else.

New Web Site

I wanted something different, not the typical writer site. While I wasn't sure exactly what that entails, I knew what I didn't want. Fortunately for me, I know a creative type who happens to be good with computers as well. Guess holding her in my lap before she could talk while she played Sesame Street games on the PC has paid off. Yeppers, one of my offspring took the home page photo (real black and white film!), and the other spent hours writing code. Give it a look at www.tracydunham.com and see what you think.

On another note, I read something that said second drafts, rewrites, are usually worse than the first draft. Since I depend on those rewrites to straighten out the most obvious messes I've gotten the book into, I must disagree. However, I do think it's easy to lose that first draft enthusiasm, the eager tumble of words, in over-polishing. It's a fine line, for sure. Second, third, or more drafts are my norm. A book is an ever-evolving creature.

Like all of us.

Getting it Right

Gardening is a whole lot like work at the beginning. I should know - I spent this afternoon (no humidity, yeah!) digging up scraggly pansies and replacing them. Couldn't find the exact shade of salmon vinca I wanted, made do with something else, and am still not satisfied. I'll work at finding what I want, and until I do, I won't give up.

It felt a whole lot like I was starting a new book. Searching for the exact opening sentence. The right words to make the book "sound" right. Going through racks and racks of plants, hunting and pecking for the precisely correct color. Openings are so important - they can make or break you. Just like a flower garden in the front yard sets the tone for the rest of the plantings.

As I drive down a two-laned road near my house, I marvel at those homeowners who have bedecked their roadsides with a jubilation of colorful plants. Riots of color. I get their pride, their color schemes, how hard they've worked to make that first glimpse of their properties just so. Other houses have bedraggled entrances, weeds sky high. The yards may be neatly trimmed, but that first impression is one of neglect and laissez faire. Too bad.

Those first three pages of a novel are, like the gardens I see near my house, crucial to how you'll perceive the rest of the story. Make them killer. Grab the readers' "eyes," and they'll keep going for the rest of the ride.

Goofing Off

The Saturday list was more than a page long. Life has intervened this week, and regular chores, plus those little add-ons that zap hours like melting ice cream in hundred degree heat, have been pushed aside. Even the garden can't lure me, not in this heat. All the stuff I hate about summer, the heat, the humidity, take the joy out of playing in the garden as well. So any excuse will do to avoid the mundane, unless it's dire.

Today we decided to play. An antique car show. Lunch out. Some frivolous shopping. Chinese for dinner. A thunderstorm that drenched us. All in all, a lovely day. It's hard to step out of the regular world and into a different one, but it's something that we need to do to restore our batteries.

Heroes must move from the ordinary into the extraordinary world. That's when the adventure begins, the story starts, and we hang on for the ride. Make it a good one.

Firebirds and Conflagrations

An elderly neighbor possesses a real treasure in her carport. Every day as I walk the hound past it, I wonder about the white Pontiac Firebird sitting on squishy tires, mildew marring its sides. The proud firebird on the hood is hidden under years of dirt. I know she drove it to work twenty years ago, but it hasn't moved since. Her vanity license plate, with her initials, is still in the bracket.

She's a sweet faced, white-haired little elderly lady who seldom leaves the house these days. I can't help but wonder at how she came to own this hot, fast car, and why. Did she start out on the local short track, driving Pontiacs? Or did she just always want to drive a car that made grown men drool? Although it's over twenty years old now, that Firebird still has "it."

Whatever the reason, I know my neighbor has a story that's probably more exciting than anything I have imagined. One day, I'll ask her.

On another note: We just saw the movie INCENDIES. All I can say is, wow. If you want fun, don't go. If you want to understand some of the recent history of Lebanon and delve into a heart breaker of a mystery, see it. Just make sure you're prepared for a tense, scary, tragic ride. I won't give away its ending, but you'll see it coming.

Just hold on tight.

City of Ashes

Just finished reading Cassandra Clare's CITY OF ASHES. While it has some witty bits of dialogue, it is, at its heart, about teenagers whose parents have checked out on them. Clary's mother is in a self-induced coma, Jace's father abandoned him as a child, and then his adoptive mother hands him over to a sadistic, pathological official who proceeds to torture him. Yep, the adults in this book do not come off well. Oh, and a 300 year old warlock is in love with another teenager, Alec. Yewww. Didn't any editor pick up on the pedophilia? And didn't anyone give a hoot about the incestuous attraction between Clary and her brother, Jace? It's addressed, but not satisfactorily. Clary lusts after her sibling with totally adult feelings. Another big Yuck.

The dystopian world Clare has created is filled with demons and danger, and our teenage heroes are targets for the worst of both. I guess this book resonates with teenagers who feel they're alone in the world, fighting for their very survival. But it scares me that this series is a bestseller. What does it say about our society when kids grab onto story lines like pedophilia and incest and make them popular?

I remember reading Lloyd Alexander's award winning THE HIGH KING when it first came out umpteen million years ago, and thinking "what is this?" To feel better, the hero took a pill and voila, all better. A reflection of society? I fear so.

Can the same be said of Clare's series? I fear so even more.

Memorial Day

When I was a kid, my Girl Scout troop spent Memorial Day weekend placing American flags on each grave in a military cemetery attached to an old (established in the early nineteenth century) army post. So there were a lot of graves. There we were, all of us in our uniforms with our Merit Badge sashes, wishing we were elsewhere. At least, I was. I found the whole thing creepy. I mean, sheesh, these were dead people!

Shows what a little idiot I was. I just today was discussing the history of Memorial Day with my beloved, which lead into Flanders Fields, and I realized this cache of information had bubbled up from the Girl Scout memory cells. So I can say I did learn something during my tour of Scouting duty, though not the girly things the dedicated and selfless GS leaders tried to teach us.

I did my best, during my one and only camping grip with the Scouts, to scare the tar out of my tent mates. During a roaring thunderstorm, with heavy army tents trembling in the high wind, I told ghost stories that had my imprisoned audience screaming for their mommies. Needless to say, it was suggested that I might want to go home. I never camped again with the Girl Scouts, and to this day, camping is one of my least favorite activities.

Unless it's an opportunity to scare people with creepy stories. Oh, wait, I don't have to camp to do that!

I miss the red crepe paper poppies everyone wore in their lapels on Memorial Day.