Girly girls

While I consider myself feminine (I'm sure my beloved is happy to know that), I don't like furbelows and ruffles and all manner of fussy adornment. A good string of pearls, a nice diamond (thank you, sweetie), and a good haircut are all I really need. Oh, and mascara. And a quality, um, unmentionable undergarment. When a lady reaches a certain age... But when my daughters and I hit the Southern Women's Show, I stumble into another world. Big clunky costume jewelry that almost tempts me. Make up do-overs. Cute shirtless fireman on a stage, dancing to rockin' tunes, all of whom I ogle shamelessly. I wonder if this lipstick is the right shade. Should I buy this wonderful dip mix? Then I return to my senses and buy some great garden snips and a saw. In pink, so my beloved won't be tempted to borrow them. I feel much better. Then I line up some window salesmen to give me bids on new windows for the house. Yes, definitely more myself. I'm almost back to normal when . . . homemade creams grab me. My dry skin says stop and try them. Almost a hundred dollars later, I think I can escape the SWS, feeling as if I've gone over the line into female overload just a bit. For a few hours, it's okay. I'm sure my daughters wonder who the heck this woman is who calls herself their mother for the short time we're traipsing the pink carpet.

Worms

One morning a couple of weeks ago, our yard, and those of many others in our neighborhood, displayed an amazing layer of green, wiggling, inch long worms, squinching their way all over our house, our cars, and our oaks and maples.  With each successive morning, these (at first) cute creatures made our yard look like a scene from a science fiction movie.  We weren't too disturbed, initially, figuring they'd disappear in a few days.

Wrong.  They spread to the lilacs, the dogwoods in bloom, the azaleas, hostas, and ourselves.  We couldn't get out of the house without a broom to knock down the webs dropping the worms from trees like paratroopers invading enemy territory.  No one came back into the house without a partner to pluck the green, and now black and green, invaders from our backs and our hair. I used the garden hose, set on "blast," to drive them from the front of the house and our windshields. 

We couldn't get the upper hand. The worst was that all the beautiful new growth, that sparkling green in the trees, the new shoots of peonies, disappeared.  The worms grew fatter and bolder. The oaks looked as if Agent Orange had decimated them.  Azaleas resembled brown lace. My joy in the new spring plummeted.  We'd jumped from winter into late fall, with everything bare and barren once more.

I decided to rally myself mentally. If  the worms were part of a strange cycle of these bloodworts (as the newspaper said they were properly called, not "those nasty things" we had named them), I had to trust reports that the trees would recover.  Everything would bloom again.  Sure enough, only a few worms remain, and I can see that the trees are beginning to recover. Tiny buds pattern against the sky when I look upward.

This has reminded me that we can't crumple under an onslaught of the strangely incomprehensible, the ugly, and the destructive.  Criticism of our creative work, coming from our own doubts or outside "critiquers," can eat away at our new growth.  Don't let it. The nibblers that want to eat our joy in what we do, as creative people, can only ingest so much, then they'll die away, naturally. Because we will bloom again. We'll keep on growing as writers and artists, despite any attempts to stunt our growth.

No Pulitzer for Fiction?

I am not the only one who is perplexed by the lack of an award for the Pulitzer prize in fiction. The three finalists rose from a field of three hundred. The volunteers put in countless hours to come up with the three best of the class. They get no thanks except from those in the know. They do it for love of books and the honor the prize bestows on the finalists. I have no doubt the panel took its job very seriously and worked extremely hard.

Been there, done that. I've been a judge in several genre contests, and it takes over your life. Your own work suffers because you don't want any of the voices from these contest books bleeding into your own work. You agonize and reread as many of the books as you feel need it. Lists dominate your desk, as you enumerate good points and bad for every entrant. It's work, and hard work at that. If the final judges in the contests in which I was involved hadn't picked a winner, I would have been royally, and loudly, upset.

I hope everyone buys the books that finaled for the Pulitzer fiction prize, and that they discuss which they liked best. Vote with your pocketbook. Don't let the Pulitzer committee get away with being so. . .namby pamby.(Is that still a word, or words?)

I hope next year the judges do the job they were chosen to do. The first round judges did. I applaud them and wish them the best.

Right Brain, Left Brain

I have never subscribed to the belief that if you're creative, you're a mess with business, numbers, and the like.  Creative people, more than all others, need to have an analytical side that can keep them out of trouble. Think of all those rock stars and actors who get robbed blind by business managers. It's not that they can't take care of their own business, they just don't want to.

Anyone can keep track of their accounts and contracts, if they care about it. And we all should. We who live in our imaginations need to be even more vigilant, because it's so easy to let that non-fun side of our writing careers slide into Scarlett O'Hara territory - I'll think about it tomorrow.  Not good enough.  If you're smart -if you're creative, you're plenty smart - you'll pay attention to your accounts, your investments, your contracts, and ride herd on the people you hire to keep you out of the IRS's clutches.

That's not to say I'm perfect. But I'm not afraid of a column of figures or filling out forms.  Contracts, which I happen to like because most of them are written in the most obscure legalese imaginable and they're like puzzles to me, need a professional to review them.  I've signed my share of bad contracts (Avalon Books being a prime example) but back in the day, I just wanted my westerns out in the world, and westerns have been a dying breed for a very long time. Lame excuse, I know. And I've learned my lesson well.

But at least I did the damage myself. I didn't hand over my business to anyone else to mess up.  Same with all my other business decisions. When they're a success, I gloat. When they're in the ditch, I figure it's time to move on.

But I'll never pretend I don't understand the business side of writing because I'm an artist.  That's the best reason in the world to educate myself about what's what.

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Is everything in a novel real?

I've heard that all authors write about their own lives. That every story is, in its heart, autobiographical. Maybe, it's just that we writers live in our stories so deeply, they become our lives. That's what I think. No, what I know.

If I can't live in the book, see the characters, hear them talking to one another, it's doomed. Both as a reader and as an author, I long for that immersion. When it happens, I want to shout out loud to everyone I know, even to strangers, that they MUST read this book. It doesn't happen often. Themes of courage, honor, perseverance in the face of astounding adversity, when done even half-well, suck me in. When we live in someone else's skin through a book, we become them for the space of those words on the page. We are blessed by that experience.

I suppose that's why I decided in eighth grade to become a lawyer. (Despite my English teacher's lecture that women couldn't be lawyers.) Reading To Kill a Mockingbird showed me the power of an honorable lawyer, willing to take a case that wasn't, even in its best light, winnable. I took that lesson to heart.

Many years later, new law degree in hand, I was appointed, as young lawyers were in those days, to represent an indigent mentally handicapped woman that the state wanted to sterilize. Law school hadn't taught me about the difference between the purity of the law it taught and the real practice of law. The system in Virginia had been sterilizing mentally challenged
people for years. I'd never heard of such a thing, and was shocked by the proceedings. I was there just to keep up appearances. I wasn't expected to even say anything, I was informed.

It never happened again. I had plenty to say whenever I was appointed by the court again to some small proceeding. I can't say it made any difference, but I had to be truthful to my inner Atticus.

I just wished I'd been able to effect change. Time took care of most of it.

Right to Peaceful Assembly

Recently, nonviolent protestors publically voiced their objections to the travesty that is the Virginia Assembly's vote to force women seeking an abortion to have an ultrasound. They stood on the steps of the Virginia Capitol. They waved signs. And they were attacked and arrested by police in riot gear. This is old news.

Last Sunday, members of several churches marched down Monument Avenue, an old, venerated street lined with massive statues of Confederate generals and Matthew Maurey (look him up, he's cool), and one weird bronze of Arthur Ashe batting at grasping children with his tennis racket. They joined to commemorate Palm Sunday, and waving palm branches, they gave voice to their religious beliefs. They had no permit that I am aware of. Police in riot gear were nowhere in sight.

So you can proclaim your religion on a public street, but you can't protest a new law in the making on state property. I guess mainstream religion is okay, politics that aren't popular aren't.

I wonder what would have happened if Wiccans had marched down Monument Avenue to celebrate the Summer solistice?

Patience

I confess, patience is not my forte'. I've been sitting on my tush at the Toyota dealer while the computer in my Prius tries to converse with the computer in my remote control. I don't know if one is speaking Japanese and the other, English, but it's not a quick process. I'm trying to chill, but . . . .

I've learned the hard way to be patient with a book. If it's not flowing, I have a bag of tricks to figure out the problem. Re-reading from the first page will usually reveal the plot problem that's stopping the story in its tracks. Sometimes I have the wrong hero, the wrong setting, or the voice isn't right. If none of those are the problem, I keep on writing. I don't worry about the words or what's on the page, because somewhere along the line, I'll start hitting it out of the park. Those pesky story-stoppers can try to make me lose my mind, but they won't win.

Because keeping at it is the only way to work through the hard days at the keyboard.

Now, if only my remote would speak to the computer in my Prius.

Writer's Envy

I've found a few books recently I wish I'd written. My life has been in a stewpot of smelly mess recently (cleaned that one up, as the words that accurately describe what's been going on aren't used in decent society), and I've been striving to find time to read new authors for a contest I'm judging. A handful of these guys are gggoooodddd. Others are solid. All have talent. But good golly Miss Molly, how did some of them break out of the gate with such stellar debuts?

I re-read my debut novel, Morgan's Land, a Western published in the early eighties, and cringed at some of my rookie mistakes. On the flip side, I discovered pieces here and there that lit up the page, so it wasn't a lost cause. To cut myself some slack, I reminded myself that writing styles have changed a ton in the years since. But I had nowhere the level of sophistication of some of these new authors.

I am impressed. I want to write them fan letters. And I need to get back to my own writing before I forget all I've learned since that first novel was published eons ago.

Re-doing it

It's just been announced that Bruton Smith will resurface Bristol Speedway into the track's original confirmation and banking. Watching the Nascar race last weekend, it was more than obvious that the fans have had it with the "new" surface and its boring racing. I know we had. Haven't been to Bristol in four years now, I think, and it was once the hottest ticket on the Nascar circuit. Season tickets were family treasures. The empty stands proved that those season ticket holders have taken a hike. So Smith's re-do makes economic sense. If it kept on going the way it was, no one would be there to see a Sprint Cup race in a few years.

Speaking of re-dos, tomorrow my parents are being re-interred at Arlington National Cemetery. My dad was placed in the wrong grave last January, a fact I was able to prove because I had all his paperwork from 1952 showing the family plot and his place in it. Family plots are pretty rare at Arlington, but still, when there's a row of headstones all with one family name, why would you bury someone else in between two of them, someone who was no relation or even of a similar name?  It's been a long haul to figure out what to do, and a tree has had to be cut down to keep the family plots intact, but it was what my father wanted way back when this deal was set out and approved by the ANC superintendent.  This mistake was, I hope, a rare one. At least it's being rectified.

Even those with the best of intentions make mistakes. There's no shame in a re-do.

Hell Week continues

I never imagined it would be so difficult to see my parents' possessions in the hands of strangers. Not just strangers, but dealers, people who are hauling away carloads of oriental rugs and Japanese prints to resell them to other people. It's almost ghoulish, and I'm not dealing well.

There's no way on God's green earth that my brother and I could absorb the accumulation of over sixty-five years. Nor are we inclined to become hoarders. I have, however, learned a valuable lesson. My children had better come and get what they want now, because I'm not hanging onto stuff. Just because it's been in this house for years doesn't mean it's staying here.

There's something liberating about choosing who gets what while we're still here to see them enjoy it. Houses should never have floored attics. They're evil. As soon as mine gets emptied, the flooring is history. I have learned this lesson well.

Meanwhile, I just have to survive the next week. It's going to be a long one. Ghosts of the past are everywhere, and I really prefer the present.

Hell Week

Nope, not the final seven days for SEAL trainees. Not even final exams, which in no way equals Hell Week for SEALS. I'm talking about getting the contents of my parents' house ready for an estate sale.

I have polished silver until I'm ready to lobby for a ban on the stuff. Washing crystal without chipping it has to be insanity incarnate. And all those once-beautiful linens? Yikes. Getting out old coffee stains should qualify me for sainthood. BTW, they don't really come out. Mostly, I marvel at all the STUFF my parents accumulated in their many years of traveling all over the world. A ton of it ended up in the attic, where it did no one any good.

I have taken this lesson to heart. As soon as we get through this week, I am going to start "shaking down," as my grandmother used to say. Starting with my attic, something is going to leave our abode every day. Love it, use it, or lose it is my new mantra.

I mean it, too!

Scatterbrained

I'm usually pretty good at remembering what my characters look like, etc. Now and then I change an eye color or two, but my internal picture of who these people are is pretty much set before I start writing.  Not any more.

Once I lose that picture, I find it hard to get the characters back. Perhaps because I visualize each scene, (art history major here), once the setting and the people in it are confused, the story may as well jump off a cliff. Several early works have suffered that awful fate.  Recently, I picked up a WIP that needs revisions and had been resting in the corner of my mind, and I found I couldn't see the story anymore. The people had taken a hike.  I don't know if it's a result of an overload in my circuits (too much going on here to mention) or that they just decided to teach me a lesson.

If so, I have learned it.  From now on, I'm going to make detailed notes about the characters and every little characteristic. (Sorry if there's an overload of "character" in this post. Can't be helped.)  See if they can get away from me now!

Is this a good idea?

Despite our cruise ship woes, we met some interesting people. I know, I know, "interesting" is a nothing kind of word. Blah. Useless. But in this instance, it fits.  The couple from Mississippi who drove to Florida to catch the cruise, regaled us about eating the worst fried chicken in the world in a town in Wisconsin billing itself as the friend chicken capital of the world was hilarious. We chatted with librarians and needlepointers, a Russian violinist to whom we taught the world "olive," and generally nice folks.

One lady took the proverbial cake. Eighty-eight years old, she lives on the cruise ship year round, and has for the past 17 years. She knows all the crew by name, and they know her. Rolling her walker from dining room to hallway, she appeared to enjoy her life as an honorary "dam" member of the crew.  Front row center for every entertainment, she wasn't shy about joining in.

Yet I had to wonder if she is ever lonely. People she grows to know on board of the passenger variety disembark after a week or two. The crew shifts must happen on a timely basis. She's not too spry, though she's moving under her own steam. She doesn't go ashore with any of the staff. I found myself fascinated with "what if" questions, the sort that lead to a story.

Can I metamorphize her into a sleuth? Ah, the ultimate "locked door" mystery solver, one with a red sequin rose in her hair, no less. Or is she a matchmaker for the younger staff, finding them partners who are on board for only a few months or weeks at a time? Will she match up the charming Russian violinist with the Tai Chi instructor from Portugal?

Or should I leave her alone? I haven't yet decided. . . . and I'm certainly not about to write anything insulting or inappropriate if she becomes my detective.  My question is: would it be unkind or immoral to base a character, loosely, on this lovely woman's choice of an unorthodox life for one of her advanced years?

What do you think?

Home Again

Sorry for the quiet. Just got home this afternoon after a brief run down south. Started in Daytona at the Bud Shootout, then hopped a ship for the Western Caribbean. (sp?) We were supposed to go to Key West first, but the Ryndam blew a diesel generator and we couldn't dock.

We should have seen the handwriting on the wall. We've cruised with Holland America before and everything was lovely. The Ryndam, however, is much smaller and older, and it shows. I won't run through the litany of problems, because we did get some sun and warm weather. For that, I'm grateful.

Anyway, we passed on the Daytona 500 when we docked to rain and more rain. Will write more later, after all the laundry and unpacking is done.

Vampires and Made in China

First rant of the day (hopefully, the only rant): We received a solicitation for a donation from the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the esteemed VFW. Inside was a nice card to fill out so it could be delivered to a Vet in a Veterans Hospital, and an equally gracious recitation of all the good things the VFW does for our veterans, requesting we send a check. So far, so good. But a small "Made in China" on the envelope containing all this niceness stopped me in my tracks. The VFW of the United States of America is using China to print its solicitation letters?


Whoa up there. How about putting jobless veterans to work in the U.S. printing out the VFW's goods?  The VFW won't get a penny from me until it keeps its business within these borders. I'll bet there are a ton of people who didn't notice that Made in China on the letters they received. From now on, I'm paying more attention.

How does this relate to vampires, you ask? Well, it really doesn't, except I was reading a review of the newest Tim Burton-produced movie, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, VAMPIRE SLAYER.  I remember seeing the book on the shelf and laughing out loud. The preposterous always amuses me. Now, there's a movie. And Vampire Diaries on the CW. And vampires still holding court on bookshelves everywhere. But a line in the movie's review, spoken by one of the flick's producers, lit the proverbial light bulb in my brain.

The movie, he said, was aimed for a  youthful audience, or words to that effect. Old people needn't bother to plunk down their money for a ticket. It came to me that vampires are still big sellers for younger readers, and I include those in their twenties and early thirties, because they're about immortality. The beautiful young who never age rule society, living century upon century, wealthy, seductive, and without those pesky laws of the real world to impede their desires. Is this an attractive fictional universe? Heck, yes!

The teenagers of Vampire Diaries, beautiful and ripped all, live without the impediment of parents or poverty. They drink alcohol whenever they like, because hey, there are no adults to say "no." They drive cool cars. They go to school when they feel like it or to attend the prom, and that's it.  Their clothes are stylish and their jewelry fashionable. Hair and makeup never get messy. Lovers come and go from their bedrooms at all hours.

Has our society placed such a premium on youth and living longer that it's now the reigning theme in fiction? 
I'm beginning to worry that the answer is, heck, yes.

Characters

I've met quite a few in my time on this plane of existence. Some will never leave my brain, while others pop up unexpectedly and without warning. Most of them are fictional.  Yes, when I get sucked into a story, it's usually about character for me.

Dave Robicheaux? I swear, I know the man like I know my own Beloved. (Not physically, of course.) James Lee Burke has given his main protagonist a life that's so real, I believe in him. Same with the Doc Ford novels. Now and then, Doc Ford goes off the deep end, but he always comes back to reality somehow, somewhere. I'm reading Learning to Swim  right now, and Troy is fully fleshed and could be one of my friends from college.  I could go on and on about the fictional people who live inside my head and who, just now and then, seem to have a conversation with me, in the flesh. It's all good, I swear.

Can a plot-driven story have great characters? Of course. Can I think of any? Umm, not at the moment. Will do some looking-over of the bookshelves. Is Jason Bourne a plot-driven thriller series? Or is the character dominant over the shenanigans? Again, must think about it.

I've come to realize that I need a first person narrator for me to identify immediately with the hero. Larry Watson's Montana 1942 fits the bill perfectly. Deep third POV works second best for me (what a ton of work that is for the author!), then it's all the same to me. A good story will always be a good story, no matter what POV, but if you want me to remember your characters, you have to let me have a conversation with them, one on one.

Been nice talking with you!

How to Read a Book

Grandiose title, I admit. I drive my family nuts because I read the ending first. Doesn't matter if it's a thriller or a romance, I need to check to see if I like the payoff, or I'm not wasting time on the story. A fellow writer was discussing Pathetic Plots, where the main protagonist gets shafted, and my immediate reaction was "oh yeah, an Oprah pick for her book club!" If that's the way the story rolls, count me out.

My daughter has another method for deciding which book to read. If the To Be Read Pile is in danger of toppling, she'll pick three or four and read the first four chapters of each.  If she goes to bed that evening, or wakes up the next day wanting to read more of any one of them, then that's the pick of the week.  She has much more self-control than I!

My Beloved likes to savor a book. He reads carefully, deliberately, and without a bit of skimming. (Scenic descriptions? Count me out, I'm on to the next paragraph.) Consequently, he remembers each detail about the books he has read and why he liked or disliked them.  Me, I remember characters. And endings.

Time is too short, there are too many good books out there, to waste time on a tome that isn't going to tingle my toes. (My alliteration gene has gone crazy. Forgive me.)

NASCAR Hall of Fame

A quick getaway dash to Charlotte. A beautiful cloudless day in the sixties. A lovely downtown hotel. Fun dinner at a noodle bar with exotic dishes. Walking the sidewalks at night with the lights from streetlamps creating soft halos on skyrise storefronts.  Two days without estate headaches.

We used visiting the NASCAR Hall of Fame as our excuse. We'd wanted to go for ages, so we went. What we really did was escape the pressure we'd been under for months. Two days isn't much, but we had such fun studying the older race cars, reading the bios of the Hall of Fame winners, admiring the architecture of the building, and finally, when we needed to sit a bit, listening to the State of the Sport as given by Brian France et al. Reporters didn't fill the prepared seating, so we sat around the outside edges, listening closely to the blah, blah, blah that middle-aged men in suits seem to use to mask any real substantive comments or remarks.

I was struck by how far removed these men (all of the speakers and head honchos) seemed from the real sport of stock car racing. Not a bit of grease under a fingernail. Not a ball cap between any of them. They weren't so hot in the public speaking department, either. But when B. France referenced how they planned to make the stock cars more car-like next year, and how surprised the manufacturers seemed, but nicely so, I realized what the difference is. Fans, racers, mechanics, crew chiefs, owners, all care about winning and the moves on the track that get to P1. Making that hot rod faster than the speed of light (only theoretically) is the name of the game. The NASCAR suits are all about making the corporations happy. Money. Everything is aimed for bringing in more bottoms in the stands, i.e., money, and more sponsor dollars for the ISC crowd. France said there had to be "a story" for the year to be successful. Give the media a theme. Give the fans something other than racing. Baloney. Phooey. Poohdiddle.

Kurt Busch has the right idea. Go back to racing for fun, for winning for the guys who slaved over your car late at night, for your owner who has grease under his fingernails as well. NASCAR has become so much about big business, I fear the real joy racing embodies is on the endangered list.

I sure hope not. How I wish Cale, Ned, Smokey, Dale, Lee, and all that crowd ran the sport today.

Red Shoes

During these grayish, icky winter days, I find I crave color. Yesterday, I painted my kitchen. A spur of the moment act, it brought a fresh, clean look to a room I've stopped seeing because it's so familiar. Then I pulled on my dressy black jeans and felt as if I'd dropped into the wintery hole once more. Thought a second, because I really like these jeans and they're warmer than my Levis, and it hit me. I own red shoes. Three pairs. Loafers, pumps, and heeled sandals.

Red loafers it was. Instantly, I felt perkier. I may live in these red shoes until April.

So if you can't paint your kitchen, buy red shoes. Or do both.

Memoirs

Just finished reading a memoir by a woman who was raised by a mother who was a serial adulteress and fertility rabbit, as well as pill addict. The writing had depth. Some stylish phrasing here and there. A good feel for place and time.  But I felt as if I were reading something I shouldn't. Dirty, almost. A peep show I emphatically didn't want to see. Stories I'd rather not hear.

A well known author touted the book on its cover. Since I like that author, I thought I'd take a chance. Wish I hadn't. The Southern girl in me was raised to keep the family dirty laundry in the tub. One did not, never, ever, disclose family members to public shame and judgment. That's what this memoir did.

I understand, intellectually, coming to terms with a "difficult" upbringing, though mine was anything but.  This memoir was, as the saying goes, probably cathartic. But really? Do you have to publish this expose' about your family? Trashy is as trashy does. Sorry, but I feel sorry for the author's family. They didn't have a choice about this memoir, and I just hope they can someday forgive her. Though I'm not sure I would.

If memoirs are to succeed, the stories should be delightful, the characters a joy, and the reader must wish to know these people in real life. Lawrence Durrell's MY FAMILY AND OTHER ANIMALS is a prime example of how to do the job right.

Otherwise, keep it to yourself.