Trip to the Movies

1. What was the first movie you remember watching? Bambi. Why do all children's films prey upon children's one great fear: separation from the parent?

2. Do you cry at the movies? Dude, I cry at Kodak commercials. Remember the one where the little girl restores the picture of her grandmother pitching in the All-American Girl's League during WWII? And then goes and presents her grandmother with the photo asking "Grandma can you still throw like that?" ... I stand little chance against a sad movie with odds like these.

3. What is your favorite movie theater snack or drink? "Da pop corns a pope'in' 'n it's ... three-dee!" [Ten points if you can name that movie.]

4. Should popcorn be eaten buttered or unbuttered? The movie butter makes it soggy. Which equals sadness. But the stuff I make in the big kettle at home is best. Oil, whole white corn and kosher salt.

5. What's your favorite time to watch a movie? Right before bed. That way people don't try and talk about it and I can hang on to the feeling or discard it as I like. That's the whole reason I watch movies: to make me feel something outside myself, to share the emotion the director wanted to make me feel.

6. Have you ever made out in the movie theater? Yes. *shrugs* It's cool when you're a teenager. Not so cool once you get past that point *glares at 30-somethings down the row that have obviously not gotten that memo*

7. Do you ever go to the movies alone? I did once. I've been meaning to repeat but people keep telling me "oh yeah I'll see that with you" and then I wait for them and the film leaves the show.

8. Who's your favorite male actor? It used to be Harrison Ford but then he started aging not so gracefully. Johnny Depp is always amazing at everything he does and so is Ewan McGreggor. And Sean Connery has the world's coolest voice, he's one of the few people I can ID in 6 words or less.

9. Who's your favorite female actor? Julia Stiles.Kate Winslet is pretty cool.

10. Most overrated actor? Trevolta. (when he plays a man that is)

11. Name a film that made you cry? Recently? Finding Neverland ... then again I cry every time I see Ever After (when the father dies) or A League of Their Own which I cry three times; when the woman doesn't know if she's made the team or not because she can't read the names on the list; when the black woman throws in a great ball from way off and you realize that for all the "opportunity" that the league afforded women that there was still a long way to go; and finally, when the one woman gets the telegram in the locker room that her husband's not coming back from the war.

12. Name a film that made you scream? The Princess Bride. *Ahem* So, there I was, sitting on a couch full of teenagers, smushed in next to City Girl, and we're getting right into the part where the screaming eels are screaming, and the Sicilian is telling us that they only scream right before they feed. And the eel charges Princess Buttercup in all its early 80s special effect glory and Princess Buttercup screams! And at this moment -- this moment that City Girl has been waiting for -- she jams her hand into my side to the one spot on my rib cage that I am disastrously ticklish, and I shrieked! In perfect time with the movie. *shakes head* I have never screamed at another movie.

13. Where do you like to sit in a movie theater? Front and center.

14. Best movie soundtrack? Last of the Mohicans. Gorgeous. I need to find that CD it's around here somewhere ...

15. If you could look like any movie star, who would it be? Nicole Kidman.

16. If they made a movie of your life, who would play you? Julia Stiles? Or maybe Scarlett Johanson just to piss City Girl off. *seeks revenge for eel incident*

17. Have you ever walked out of a movie? Charlie's Angels 2

18. What movie do you never tire of seeing? Love Actually, Princess Bride, Sleepless in Seattle, French Kiss, While You Were Sleeping (saw it four times in one weekend)

JanNoWriMo Winner

The past week has been strange and crazy. But as it calms down I will return to my blog, I will stop posting depressing entries, I will write more on The Trees story, and I will stop to shape my eyebrows again. You might not know it, but they've been neglected and could use some love.

My paternal family saw the weekend through. Apparently, we're tough little buggers that hold it together until the last. My mother (divorced from my father) responded to the news poorly. She hadn't known how bad my uncle was doing. She knew he had cancer but she had not known that they determined that it was caused by asbestos. One of her first questions was How is your grandmother doing?

My grandmother? Is a tiny but tough woman. She held it together and weathered the storm. There were a few times when she had to step out, but that was last weekend. She has been through everything and she just doesn't fall apart. I don't think she could if she wanted to.

I finished my JanNoWriMo goal tonight by surpassing 50,000 words on one story. The novel has not reached completion. People keep mentioning that it is remarkable that I managed so much when such things were going on. I'd be lying if I told them writing fiction wasn't sheer, joyous escapism. I've had little else to do this past week other than write and worry. So I've written.



Look: the turtle made it. He didn't even get run over.

Family Stories

My father (D) and his younger brother (M) were born 17 months apart. They shared everything growing up. And everything they didn’t share they fought over. Mostly the latter.

M was still in the baby bassinet when D was up and walking. Their mother tried to keep the bassinet with her while she was working. That day it meant M was napping in the kitchen. D was underfoot as well. What she didn’t realize was that he had gotten a hold of a long handled meat fork. Didn’t realize this until she turned around to see D blindly poking the fork over his head and into the baby bassinet.

When this story is retold D just shrugs. At first you think the shrug is to say I have no explanation, I was a toddler. But then he tells you “I always wanted to be an only child.” Instead he got a total of five siblings.

D and M were little shits to each other. They admit this.

When they were teenagers D was more outgoing than M. D would find out that M liked a girl, so D asked her out before M could get up the nerve. M would find out that D had a date and ask their father for the car for the car.

They fought. Fist fought.

D’s younger sister by ten years (S) tells the story best: D and M are going at it. They’re swingin’ and punchin’ each other. Bouncin’ into the table and off of the register. And they’re in the kitchen then out in the hall then they’re falling into the closet then out into the living room and rollin' on the carpet. And the whole time here’s Mom - little 4’9” Mom - swattin’ ‘em with a broom yellin’ at ‘em to Stop it! Ge'off'im! And here I was, just cryin’ buckets of tears. Buckets. ‘Cause I was certain one of them was gonna die. ‘Cause if they didn’t kill each other I knew Mom was gonna kill’em with the broom.

D and M would double date in this big old 1950s truck that they’d worked on. M was great with cars. He could rebuild anything. Was always great with engines and got really cranky when you started needing to plug the newer ones into computers to find out what was wrong with them. He liked old cars. And he always kept up his cars. They would double date in this big old truck sitting boy girl boy girl in the front seat. But the shifting was something else. Putting it in reverse to get down a driveway meant reaching all the way out to the right and across everyone. It got some looks.

When times got tough and he got laid off from the cement plant D asked M if he ever thought about moving away from the small town they had grown up in. “Why?” M asked. “I belong here. I know the people here. They wave to you when you drive by. You don't get that in a big city.” And he did belong there. He made a place for himself. He was always taking care of people and fixing things. He loved projects. He flipped houses back before there was a fad. Back before people knew what it meant to “flip” a house.

But the one thing I remember the best is how fiercely proud he was of his sons. You knew it – knew it – every time he mentioned them. Every time. There was just no doubt. He sat up straighter when he talked about them. Something in his eye twinkled. You knew it.

We got the call this evening.

He had made it home where he wanted to be.

Self-Help: Writing to Diet

It turns out that I'm getting pretty good at skimming entire self-help books in under two hours while never leaving the book store. The Writing Diet took me just under 90 minutes. Occasionally I feel bad about this. But right now I believe everyone deserves self-help.

Which reminds me of Lorri Moore's hilarious collection of short stories titled Self-Help. Her story "How to Be an Other Woman" was fabulous. So was "How to Become a Writer" to a lesser extent. "How to Be an Other Woman" always makes me want to title all my lists clients to see regardless of what I'm listing. It's this fabulous little story that I tried to get my father to read it when I had a copy checked out of the library. Unfortunately I told him the title of the story and he was quickly turned off. No amount of swearing it was literary fiction not romance would get him to read it. But everyone should read it as Lorri Moore is one of the greatest short storyist of the latter 20th century.

Anyway! I saw Aquarius' post on The Writing Diet and decided to check it out. As requested, I'm posting my findings.

Cameron has adapted technique she introduced in The Artist's Way for unblocking that which blocks your creativity, known as "morning pages," and formatted it into 200+ pages specifically directed at food and why we eat. She did this because she noticed huge life changed happening in students of her 12 week class/program. Most notably, they got happier and lost weight.

At first I scoffed. I've tried writing in the morning and I'm shit for it. There's nothing in my head when I first roll out of bed and no one's cajoling slogans of how having nothing in my head makes it the perfect time to write free of impurities helps that. Free of impurities might be great for tap water, but not for me. When I wake up I have no words. People ask me things before my coffee and shower and I do not give them words back. I grunt. At most. Usually I just blink then shuffle away. But Cameron isn't asking for important words. She's not even asking for me to write them before my coffee and shower. She's happy to wait for me to wake up a little and maybe even steal words from the world around me to refill my brain. But what she wants is roughly twenty minutes of stream of consciousness writing. A time where you put your pen to paper and just go without thinking too hard on what you're writing. You don't write fancy fiction, you don't write anything important. You just jot down what comes to mind. You don't worry about spelling or grammar or leaving a sentence hanging. You just keep going.

Even though her students do this morning writing without ever sharing it with anyone else, they often mention to her that they have seen patterns emerge, or that they recognize thoughts that were floating around in their minds as actually being more important than they previously gave them credit for. Basically (though Cameron doesn't say this) it makes her students more self-aware. And through self-awareness they change their lives. They stop doing things that are destructive because they finally realize the cause and effect.

It doesn't take long before you realize that her methods would work well for any kind of addiction be it food or drinking or smoking or others. She also notes how many people fixed relationship problems they didn't even think they had before they started writing morning pages.

Cameron pushes further into the world of why you overeat or why you eat the bad things you do by asking you to keep a journal. It's a not a calorie counting journal or a book of judgement and punishment. Instead it's a place where you have to log every time you think of eating and what you are feeling at that moment whether or not you actually end up eating something. Again, it's more self-realization and self-awareness. You are diagnosing your own illness by identifying what triggers your eating.

In sum, it appears to be cheap, time efficient therapy if you're willing to be honest with yourself. Thankfully the only person you have to be honest with is yourself, although she covers group/buddy scenarios later in the book. She also covers big picture life stuff in the second half of the book and the whole thing is plastered with examples from students she has known.

Julia Cameron is an interesting self-help writer because she's definitely someone that society would normally deem as needing help of her own. I could be wrong, but from how she writes about herself it would appear that she's gone through bouts of serious addiction, depression and mental instability. She would be out of a job if she was your local pastor/politician, but as your new age get-in-touch-with-your-self guru she's getting book contracts. And more than that, we're listening. We are a strange society of double standards.

We don't do sad.

My father and I acknowledge emotions as diagnostic tools. An emotion worth mentioning is most often an indicator that something should be fixed. Anger, frustration, confusion and hunger. They’re like the low fuel light on your dashboard. If I express one, my father suggests options for remedy.

We don’t express emotions simply to have them acknowledged by the other. That is a chick thing. I try to do this sometimes, but he immediately tries to fix. So I have to back up and tell him that I don’t want a solution at the moment that I just want to vent to someone who will listen. Then when I’m finished I have to tell him to nod and agree because that’s the part he’s signed on for. However it’s not very satisfying when the person you’re venting to has to be coached through the process.

We express happiness and contentment also. Amusement also ranks among the top. These we share to show thankfulness and because we get along well enough that we take joy in the same simple things. “Hey Dad! This is the funny commercial! Come quick!”



Please turn on your sound and play now the best commercial ever.

But my father and I don’t do sad. We don’t do crying. Occasionally I express frustration, fear or anger through tears. But those are hot emotions. Ones that I can rage about. Things that I hope to fix and change. We don’t do sad even though we both are sentimental people. We both cry at movies. He cries easier than I do during films though he doesn’t like to admit that. Despite this we don’t do sad.

Today I caught him crying. Actually he was trying to wipe a tear from his eye just as I was sitting down at the breakfast table. Dumb luck would have it that I was looking at him as he did it and he paused as if caught red handed. I don’t think I would have said anything if he hadn’t stopped mid-movement. But it was just so odd that I asked him if he was okay. “Yeah,” he said. Then amended, “Well, sorta.”

I didn’t say anything else. I didn’t know what else to say. We don’t do sad.

We’ve known for more than nine months now that my father’s brother has terminal cancer. They originally gave him three months, six if he did the therapy.

My father has been up and down about this. It has been a year of reconciliation within the family. A year of now-or-nevers. But for me, I still don’t really know this man whom I see as being so much like my father and yet so very different from him. If my father were a Muppet he would be Rolf the Dog, my uncle Sam the Eagle. His wife is bull headed, as always, about the situation. She swore up and down that he’d be around another ten years. I think mostly about his three sons, my cousins; they’re roughly 29, 27 and 13 years old. The eldest two are married now and the youngest has always looked up to his brothers with something that far surpasses hero worship. They’ve always been the ones taking him out to play sports in the park or go fishing, but this past year they’ve been the ones teaching how to use the snowblower accompanied with phrases like you need to learn this for Dad.

I try to conceptualize, to feel compassion for my cousins but every time I do so I start to conceptualize the entire situation as a short story from my youngest cousin’s point of view. This makes me feel like an awful person. That some sort of compassion valve inside of me must be shut off if I immediately thrust all life experience into the realm of fiction. My friends have tried to tell me that it is just another form of empathy. That it is the one form of empathy that I know intimately and so I immediately turn to it. This sounds rational. But I still feel like a bad person.

When my father and I went to visit my grandmother this weekend, my father had hoped to see his brother as they live in the same town. It was then that we learned that he had and his wife had gone back to the cancer treatment center outside of Chicago. They did not expect him to leave this time.

I don’t have any kind of reference for this. I’ve been to funerals before, even spoken at one when they opened up the floor to friends and family. But I’ve never had someone close to me go through the kind of pain my father will. I was still in elementary school when my mother’s parents passed away. I remember the day of my grandfather’s funeral. I was only five. I remember being in the processional of cars. My mother being upset and snapping at my father’s driving. I remember going to the cemetery. It looked like a park to me, except I was in a dress and wasn’t allowed to play. I didn’t attend my grandmother’s funeral some years later. That came at the end of a long, drawn out affair. The woman we had known had died three years earlier when she had a stroke so bad that she never regained movement of her left side and couldn’t keep any memories from after 1970. This meant she didn’t recognize me. She didn’t know that my mother was married. She told stories to people about my mother having had an illegitimate black baby boy. My grandmother was something of a small-town-never-knew-better racist, so this was never told by my post-stroke grandmother as a joyous thing. By the time she passed away I felt like we had already mourned enough for the woman she had been. This feeling didn’t help me deal with my mother any better.

But even if I could remember more of that time in my life, my mother and my father are very, very, very different people. Which has a lot to do with why they are no longer married. And ever since I started high school, my father has been the one I was closer to. And still I don’t know what to do.

Saturday night my father, his sister and her 14 year-old twin daughters were sitting around the kitchen table with me in my grandmother’s house. There was a phone call which my grandmother answered in the living room where she and my aunt’s husband were. Then my grandmother came into the kitchen and repeated what she had just heard. That they had sent for my uncle’s sons.

I just kept quiet and didn’t make eye contact that might trip someone into tears. It would have been hard to do though because my father and my aunt were both staring pretty hard at the wood of the table. The twins started babbling about something right away again. I was actually pretty proud of them for how quickly they were able to pick up the vibe and simmer down. Although their unknowingness was welcome as a means of breaking the somber mood that could have easily become suffocating.

But suffocating is coming any day now and I don’t know how to deal with my father when it does arrive. This brother is fifteen months younger than him. They shared everything growing up. And everything they didn’t share they fought over. Mostly the latter.

We keep getting updates. Slow mile markers. Tomorrow they’re moving him home. He regains consciousness every so often, and stays awake just long enough to say that he wants to go home. So they’re bringing him home. Two to five days, they say, it doesn’t matter where now.

Latte Art

I've never attempted latte art. It didn't come with my barrista training because most Americans want their latte as quickly as possible, and with whipped cream on top. But knowing what I do of the land of lattes and milk foam and seeing this video I'm fairly certain I could do just as well as this guy.




Funny how as consumers we expect coffee that takes longer to make to be something that we pay more for.

Now this second one is a shorter video but pretty damn sweet - as well as beyond my capabilities. That's some precise pour that guy's got, unless of course he makes up the creature as he goes.

Observation

Grocery store. 5:20pm weekday. Thursday to be precise. Express check out lane. Three middle aged men.

First already paying, groceries bagged.

Second juggling several boxed and plastic containers along with three cardboard carriers of 4 bottle variety pack of cheap cheap cheap wine. No basket. No cart.

Third. Has placed groceries on floor as he crouches and digs for wallet. Six pack high end dark beer. Large packet of shrink wrapped gormet lunch meat. Ham, smoked. No basket. No cart.

All three stare at me as I pass. Yes, I am the only woman here not juggling a child or a walker. No basket. No cart. I came for gummybears.

Accept Rejection and Reject Acceptance

"You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance."
- Ray Bradbury

There it is, the Bradbury quote from above printed on a strip of green paper and affixed to my bulletin board. It lives there resting on top of my series of rejection letters from a handful of literary magazines and one from a children's book publisher.

I started pinning them up there in December 2006 as physical proof that I was doing something. They were evidence that I was trying and trying again to make it. And a part of me loves them for that. Actually, all of me loves them for that. I must be the most wacky writer out there: I love all my rejection letters. Okay the poetry contest I made an honorable mention in made me dance but when the little certificate came in the mail I showed it to my mother and then stuck it in a pile. My mother wanted to frame it but I refused as it was a cheap certificate that someone had obviously run through an inkjet and shoved into an envelope. The acceptance didn't inspire me, didn't make me feel any more like a writer than the rejection letters had. Then again, if it had come with publication not just a certificate then maybe I would have felt differently.

However it has been months since I've received a rejection letter from a literary magazine: because I've stopped submitting. Oops. This must change. Take a look at that bulletin board again:

There's lots of room there for more pre-printed notes. And it is my intent and desire to fill the board with more notes. More proof that I am working toward my future in print.

Don't get me wrong, I love my blog, but my blog needs friends. Friends that come in hand held editions.

What you don't see in that picture are all my electronic rejection letters. I don't print emails just to tack them up there just to make me feel better as I feel it is unfair to the trees. Those electronic rejections would probably double the number of letters in the picture and there would be one from as recently as early December 2007 for poetry and a couple fiction from summer 2007. But they weren't heartfelt submissions sadly.

What you do see in that picture in the lower center area is a pre-printed note with about three handwritten sentences to me from the editor. This is my most cherished note. Handwritten comments are rare. However that note is from my poetry days and I've realized I don't really have what it takes to stick in poetry. It was a phase. My strength has always lied in fiction but I think I was simply tempted by the glitz and speed of the shorter form.

So here it is, a toast to new fiction and new literary rejection letters in the new year! They are the pebbles tossed in the river: they seem small and insignificant but if I gather enough of them I may some day walk across them to the far bank.

Note to schools offering MA/MFA programs in creative writing:

Fact: most MFA programs have no trouble attracting a full class of students. When a full class is only 6-25 people one would hope that to be true.

Fact: most MFA programs refuse to mail instructions or information to applicants and instead refer everyone to their website.

That being said I have a list of suggestions (pet peeves) to make these websites more efficient.

1. Make your website easy to navigate. Links that lead to a listing of every graduate program offered to find your deadline are not efficient. I don't care when the Genetics or the Computer Science deadline is. Face it, neither do you. Put your damn deadline on your own damn page.
2. Better yet, make all the forms and steps easy to find and access. (Read: a list that actually links to forms, not to another list.)
3. If there are separate forms to apply to the grad school and to the individual program, state that in explicit language. If you harp on the fact that duplicate electronic and paper submissions should NOT be made pay particular attention to this.
4. Have a place to upload all materials if that is your thing. It consolidates. If your program has a web page with a secret address that will be sent to the applicant ten days after submitting the electronic application so that she can upload her final documents and writing sample to you please MENTION THIS before she promptly sends you paper copies the day after she submits the original application. Better still: mention it on your website period.
5. If computers and webpages aren't your thing, then don't change the web content yourself: hire one of those Computer Science students whose program deadline you sent me to earlier.
6. Don't rely on prospective students calling or emailing to resolve these problems. If we don't think we have a problem we see no need to call you as you discourage us from ringing just to chat.

I spent four years working as an IT intern for my undergraduate institution ... I'm beginning to think they use this maze as the first round of weeding people out. If you're not dedicated enough to spend hours at their website clicking dead end and misdirected links then you don't have the staying power to be grad student?

What prompted all this? I received an email yesterday asking me to fill out the English department's application form and mail it back to them as I had forgotten it. Please see No. 3.

When all is said and done who wins the prize for easiest application to complete? The University of Notre Dame. Their entire application right down to the writing sample must be uploaded via electronic submission on one (count it: one) website. Their only downfall: the English department website listed an incorrect page count for the writing sample. However a quick email to the address listed resulted in a prompt email telling me that the error had just been pointed out and that the number on the creative writing department page was correct. Mad props guys, mad props.

The University of Michigan comes in a close second but only because they want you to mail a paper copy of the writing sample but upload everything else. And if I got that wrong see above list of reasons for it not being my fault.

Another Day, Another Year

This morning I mailed the last piece of my final MFA application. It was done early last night and it got postmarked a whole 24 hours before the deadline so I'm feeling pretty good right now. It also helped that the section I left to finish this past weekend was an essay on why I would make the world's best-est-est TA along with an exercise that asked me how I would go about giving feedback to the student that wrote the sample essay they provided. Can't you just see me with my fingers steepled and a wicked grin on my face as I settled down to my computer ready to type up the notes that would shred poor little Jimmy or Peter who wrote this lovely, but fatally flawed essay?

Anyway, I left the post office still feeling pretty good about myself and since I was out I thought I'd swing by the book store to see if I could flip through a couple chapters of this one writing book I thought they had. Well it turns out they didn't have it (or anything similar) so I just browsed a little and went home. But you want to know what they do have at Barnes & Nobles on Monday morning: retirees. Other than the three year-old who looked like she was there with grandpa I was the only customer without silver hair. And they were almost all male. So ladies, if you're looking to pick up in the over 65 crowd, Monday mornings at the bookstore.

It's strange how you wake up one morning and it's just another day starting same as the day before it, except that this day means you're another day older. It's this vast leap in logic. We don't look at each morning and consider ourselves another 24 hours older, or every thirty days another month older. No, we reserve the demarcation for yearly intervals. I find it odd but fascinating.

Ah, if you cannot glean it from my rambling, today is my birthday. This makes me a Capricorn: supposedly down to earth, stubborn, good with money and a long term player (so people banter around that quote about wine or cheese I smile politely because Capricorns really do get better as they get older).

Once upon a time, I spent time with a friend and a book that was supposed to get more in depth to my astrological-whateverness, except I couldn't remember when I had been born during the day. I only knew it was somewhere between 6-8am. The problem was that at 7am some celestial body of importance was rising or setting and the person I was doing all this with got very huffy with me. Turns out I was born at 6:53am as recently told to me by my mother with a great deal of asperity. Twenty-some years later she's still annoyed that I decided to be a morning baby.

Some signs are easy to remember. Scorpio is the scorpion, Leo's the lion, Pieces is the fish, Virgo's the virgin. And for some reason people even seem to all remember that Cancer is the crab. Dunno why they just do. Capricorn is one of those ram/goat things that rounds out the bunch. He's actually half goat half fish. Story goes that at one point he was entirely goat until there was an incident. Goats, and goat-like things such as Satyrs, in Greek mythology are notoriously lascivious. That being said, something caused the goat to shove his entire rear end into some magical river to cool his passions. [Please note the first cold shower reference in history.] When he pulled his rear end out of the river again it was now a fish tail.

And then he found five dollars.

Moral being, if you jump halfway into a river you might turn into a partial fish. Or you might find five dollars.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year 2007

from http://www.m-w.com/info/07words.htm as refered to by GrammarGirl in her podcast

Thousands of you took part in the search for Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year for 2007, and the vast majority of you chose a small word that packs a pretty big punch. The word you've selected hasn't found its way into a regular Merriam-Webster dictionary yet—but its inclusion in our online Open Dictionary, along with the top honors it's now been awarded—might just improve its chances. This year's winning word first became popular in competitive online gaming forums as part of what is known as l33t ("leet," or "elite") speak—an esoteric computer hacker language in which numbers and symbols are put together to look like letters. Although the double "o" in the word is usually represented by double zeroes, the exclamation is also known to be an acronym for "we owned the other team"—again stemming from the gaming community.

Merriam-Webster's #1 Word of the Year for 2007 based on votes from visitors to our Web site:

1. w00t (interjection)
expressing joy (it could be after a triumph, or for no reason at all); similar in use to the word "yay"

w00t! I won the contest!

Oh this stuff is priceless.

Some people just ain’t got no gratitude

And now for your reading pleasure I shall rant on the inconsequential ...

In my JanNo quest I frequent the message boards of that community. The posters are generally supportive and encouraging (overly so at times) and there’s a nice feeling that if you need outside validation of your idea or your work you can find someone who will provide that validation. For example there are several threads devoted to specific fanfictions and encouragement of just that one storyline/set of characters. It proves the theory that on the internet you can always find someone who thinks like you do.

One post I found troubling however:

[I paraphrase as I’m certain she’d never give me permission to quote her, and paraphrasing gives me more room to mock her.]

I have dozens of incomplete stories and the one I’m writing right now just keeps dragging on without a good end. All these incomplete stories on my list of things I must do are discouraging me. Does anyone else have this problem?

Nope. Sure don’t.

Okay, I didn’t post that response. After all I wanted to go with the whole helpful notion of the community. So I replied from the heart and with more patience than I normally exhibit to people who pester and confuse me:

Why does this have to be discouraging? Please, take such arbitrary terms as "finishing" with a grain of salt. Even when a writer "finishes" a story, s/he has not "finished" writing, not by a long shot. There are drafts, edits (more edits if s/he wants publication). Why would anyone do this? Because we love writing. If you can't enjoy the act of writing, then what is the point? There are oodles of stories I've started but never finished. Some of them I simply grew out of as I grew older, or realized that I never really had more than a good opening to. One story, my baby for the past eight months, just informed me that while I may finish it one day that it would like to be a series.

Every story that I do finish is an accomplishment, a dream and a gift. But more than that, I am thankful for every story. I am thankful for each idea that takes shape in my mind.

I am thankful for every word I put down on the page.

And if I was not thankful for these things, then neither completion nor the act of writing would be as sweet to me as it is now.

I know I’m starting to sound like a gospel choir here, but I was really feeling it so I went for it.

A day later she came back and told me she’d have to “respectfully disagree” with me. I scratched my head for a long time trying to figure out how that phrase could be a proper response to the wording of my comment. Perhaps it would be to the rhetorical question that if you can’t enjoy the act then what is the point? Because if you think you “respectfully disagree with the majority of my response then you’ve got another think coming: one cannot disagree that I believe I am thankful. It just doesn’t work logically or grammatically.

She does not state which part she “respectfully disagrees” with, causing my aforementioned angst, then gets all sorts of formal on me. Like she’s writing an employer not a quick note to a stranger. Guess I’ve hit a nerve. Which is great, because I delight in antagonizing both stupid people and people who take themselves too seriously.

She continues by commenting that writing “The End” gives her unparallel joy.

Don’t it just, sister.

And that, unlike most people, she is bothered by her unfinished stories because they clamor for her attention when she attempts to finish another.

Umm ... is she implying at this point that when the rest of us write we can’t think about anything else? That nothing goes on in our heads? That we register nothing? That we aren’t distracted by other thoughts? The need to eat? To let the dog out? The fact that the smoke alarm is going off and there’s a cigarette still burning? (What song is that from? Dunno, can’t remember. Anyway, I’m being distracted, and I don’t get distracted because like “most people” I have a one track mind that does not think of such things while writing.)

She then describes several different analogies for the direness of her present situation. Including one that has to do with traffic and the antiquated logging industry, and another that sounds like a nightmare reproduced on a badly scripted sitcom.

I empathize. Really.

No, actually, I don’t.

She then states that if she could achieve that perfect unparalleled joyous moment of “The End” a few more times that everything would get better. Her world would clear. Birds would sing. Flowers would bloom. Kittens would do ... kittenish things.

Now I'm thinking she might just be a junkie. Just one more hit that’s all I need. Just one more.

Then she slips back into her formal woe-is-I phraseology, and tells us that, then again, she may be the only one suffering from this acute but rare disease.

It has taken every ounce of my will power not to tell her to eat shit and die. But I’m being good. Although I did almost start a reply to her that began: “Look, Sugar, enough with the pity party ...” But I’m being good. Positive. I’m rising above. ... And turning her into blog fodder.

I had a workshop instructor once who shut down a student worried about not generating enough new material by telling us that she was thankful for even half a word.

Hey, I didn’t go that far at least.

Half words don’t mean much to me. They’re like going fishing and only getting half a fish: ya gotta throw it back because you’re just not certain about it.

But I am, honestly and truly, thankful for every word, because what is a story if not made of words? What good is a story if not made of good words? If it is made of poor word choices, few or many, that affects the overall quality of the story and diminishes its worth. Each word is a gift. A small but carefully chosen gift.

I got many gifts for Christmas this year, some with more meaning or more monetary value than others but when people ask me what I got my first response is “Penguin Poop!” My mother spent a couple of dollars buying me chocolate covered almonds that had been marketed as penguin poop. I thought it was ingenious! And I adored it all the more because I am in love with penguins. It was a little gift, not unlike a word, that I am thankful for because it was well chosen, thoughtful and appropriate.

There is no shame in enjoying the big things in life. But there is far less wonder in life if the small things do not cause joy as well.

I was upset yesterday because my word count crawled to a halt the day before after only a 600 word session. Then I found myself with another headache that kept me from starting until several hours later than I wanted. But then I shook myself and said at least I was still going. At least I had still made 15,007 words. Fifteen-thousand-and-seven sparkling words chosen just for my story out of the thousands upon thousands of words out there that exist or are yet to exist. 15,007 gifts to be thankful for. And so I asked myself why I was upset, and found I wasn’t anymore.

In sum, I wonder if this other young woman will ever succeed at her goal. And if she does, if will that truly make her happy.

Grumbling as I get on the bandwagon.

Whenever I see these things I immediately want to share my answers. Why? Because I have an unabashed belief that everyone wants to know my opinion on everything. So why am I grumbling when presented with a narcissistic activity cloaked in a veil of social acceptability? It’s the bandwagon element. I resent the bandwagon. I own a Honda, and it is my preferred mode of transportation. That said, make room because my ass is getting on the bandwagon with ya’ll.

1. Do you still have tonsils? I think so.

2. Would you bungee jump? The thought freaks me out. I’d probably think it was great fun once I jumped, I’m the kid standing at the top of the diving board for a long time gathering courage.

3. If you could do anything in the world for a living what would it be? To get a beautiful little cottage house next to a speck on the map town and write in the front parlor day in and day out.

4. How many tattoos do you have? None ... but I’m still young and stupid so that could change.

5. Your favorite fictional animal? The Loch Ness Monster. I got a 'Mysteries of the World' book when I was eight and spent the next ten months obsessed with Nessie.

6. One person that never fails to make you laugh? Dave. Yes, those are women's sun glasses, no, he's not gay. Who will never see this because he rejects the internet. As a college student he didn’t even have facebook. Gasp!

7. Do you consider yourself well organized? Yes, I consider myself organized. However if you saw my work room right now you’d consider me delusional.

8. Any addictions? Coffee, writing, and now, blogging. Poo on you if you hadn't already figured that out.

9. From what news source do you receive the bulk of your news? It used to be CNN and the Guardian Weekly. Now it's mostly NPR. The NYTimes shows up in my email inbox daily but I normally just glance at the headlines.

10. Would you rather go to a carnival or circus? Carnival! Just say no to stinky elephants.

11. When you were twelve years old, what did you want to be when you grew up? I wanted to play olympic field hockey.

12. Best movie you've seen this year? Ratatouille.

13. Favorite alcoholic drink? Red wine if someone who knows wine is picking (and buying) if not I choose Smithwicks.

14. What is the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning? List the reasons (if any exist) for me to leave my warm bed.

15. Siblings? Only child. No, I'm not spoiled. ... Okay I am, but not beyond reason.

16. *Crickets chipring.*

17. Have you ever gone to therapy? Twice I was told I had to go "or else" by someone who was not a therapist but who had power over me in some way. I went and the therapist told me in not as many words go away, I have bigger problems to deal with.

18. If you could have one super power what would it be? Ability to see the truth in people. To tell if they're lying or covering something up.

19. Do you own any furniture from Ikea? Yes! IKEA =

Furniture-Mecca

20. Have you ever gone camping? I was a girl scout. Ahem, as I am no longer a girl scout I no longer feel the need to spend the night any place that doesn't come with a shower and a hair dryer. My power went out today and I could not use my hair dryer. That is the closest I've come to camping in the past 14+ years.

21. Gas prices! First thought? I want a hybrid.

22. Your favorite cartoon character? Merriweather from Sleeping Beauty.

23. What was your first car? Dodge Dynastsy.

24. Do you think marriage is an outdated ritual? For religion? No. For the government to have its fingers in? Yes.

25. The Cosby Show or the Simpsons? Simpsons, but I'd rather Family Guy.

26. Do you go to church? Not unless I'm promised food.

27. What famous person would you like to have dinner with? Socrates (see post about who I'd invite to my Tree House Club for details) Although Aquarius' suggestion of Al Gore would be great too.

28. What errand/chore do you despise? Emptying the dishwasher. I should probably be in therapy for that alone.

29. First thought when the alarm went off this morning? This beep is for the Dragon-Section. I kid you not. That's what I thought my alarm clock was designating.

30. Last time you puked from drinking? October. It was closely followed by a vow never again to party with those people.

31. What is your heritage? German, Polish, English, Irish, French-Canadian (which is a different culture than French, don't try to lump them together like my idiot teacher in 7th grade)

32. Favourite flower? Lilacs, but mostly Lavender. I was in southern France when the Lavender fields were blooming. Amazing.

33. Disney or Warner Bros? Disney. What little girl didn't want to be one of their princesses?

34. What is your best childhood memory? Making Bisquick cinnamon rolls with my father on Saturday mornings.

35. Your favorite potato chip? Terra Chips. They make them of things like sweet potatoes, parsnips, yuka, ruby taro, taro, batata. WTF is a batata? I don't know, but it tastes good.

36. What is your favorite candy? Skittles.

37. What is your astrological sign? Capricorn.

39. Do you own a gun? There is no good reason on this earth for me to own a gun. Maybe if it was a hobby to collect them, or if I hunted deer. I do neither.

40. What do you think of hot dogs? Try an all-beef kosher hot dog. So much better than the normal kind. Even better if it comes from the concession stand.

Storm's a'brewin'!

You know how there’s an arch type of old men sitting on the porch rocking away telling you that a storm’s a’brewin’! cause they can feel it in there knees? Well someone get me a rocking chair.

I have been developing the worst sinus headaches whenever a storm’s about to show up, the barometer rises or, like today, general ickiness ensues. The effect is not pleasant.

I’ve always gotten horrible headaches – As a child my mother thought I just ate chewable Tylenol so much because I liked the taste. Ick and no. – but for the past couple of years I’ve been able to keep them under control by staying away from the three big no-nos that always cause me pain: red wine, Splenda and tofu/MSG. Why do I lump tofu and MSG together? Because supposedly your body handles processed tofu in the same way it handled MSG. Darn, no to-furkey for me.

But my new weather-telling ability seems to negate all my careful no-tofu planning. I guess the good news is that a combination of decongestants, pain killers, and some time spent curled into a little ball make it pass.

I received notification from the Kenyon Review that I have been offered a spot in their summer 2008 program! This is not an MFA program (too early to hear back from them yet) but it is the fabulous weeklong workshop I attended last summer as a “Fiction for New Writers” participant. “New Writers” had to submit a résumé but not a writing sample to get in. However, to move up from the “New Writers” workshop group to the “Fiction” workshop this year I had to submit a writing sample for them to read. *Dances!* And now I’m in the Fiction Workshop, nothing “New” about it!

I started in on my first JanNo, actually my first WriMo ever. (Details) And it quickly became an obsession. I am currently at 14,387 words written since January 1, 2008. Which is about four or five times the amount of original fiction I wrote in the month of December.

The greatest part is the community forum boards. People are constantly posting, requesting help plotting, sharing trials, posting successes and generally being supportive of each other. And every so often I find out that one of the posters is 15 – or worse, 12 – and I choke a little. You’re 12 and you’ve already written 20,000 words on one single story? I’ve ... well I’ve never done that, not for one single story. My senior thesis clocked in at just under 18,500 and that took months!

And then spider attacked my writing desk Aah!

I took a break from JanNo to write on The Trees but stopped just shy of where it starts to get interesting, and posted that, due in great part to Jud dropping hints like bombshells.

Then I finally decided to check out the forum boards that Poets&Writers magazine has online. I'm uncertain why I avoided these prior to completing the bulk of my MFA applications. They would have been a great resource; however, knowing what I do now about them, I think it is a good thing I didn’t find them.

They call the boards their “Speak Easy” and I’m not sure why they thought the title was so cute. If there actually was alcohol involved I might be of a different opinion. Instead, they offer up nothing but a taste of desperation.

Like some sort of information clutching archivist, P&W has not cleaned out these boards since they were first created in 2004. And, as best I can tell, does not allow the casual browser to create her own thread. The result: popular threads that are thousands of entries long.

Who really wants to sort through all that? Not I, said the Speak Coffee.

Nervous would-be MFA candidates are already making noises about when they’re going to hear back. And swapping stories of when such-n-such top school made the first round of phone calls last year.

Letters are bad, they tell you. Acceptances only come by phone or email. If they sent you a letter, it has a rejection in it.

Why am I reading this stuff?!?!

I had been warned about the P&W boards: that they suck you in, waste hours of your life and eventually steal your soul.

That I’m certain is true and sound advice. Especially as no one – no one – is getting a call in the month of January. Academia does not move that fast. Period.

So I shook my head in wonder and disbelief, cleaned off the trail of spider guts from my desk where I’d helped the little guy to his final moments, and cocooned myself in my JanNo. Better a productive obsession than an unproductive one.

Happy New Year

2007 Retrospective
Coffee. Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop (like coming home). Brief, almost comic, stint at law school (like the sinking feeling of getting pulled over for the first time). Coffee. MFA applications. Four weddings, no funerals. Blog. Coffee. Snow!

2008 Prospectus

• I begin the new year with coffee and about 6” of snow. More of each are anticipated throughout the day. Snow!
• Last year (last spring actually) I made it a goal/effort to post a new blog entry once a week. In 2007 I accumulated 50 entries, most of which occurred in a flurry at the end of the year. This year the goal is to make it a more evenly spaced 52+ entries.
• There’s the JanNoWriMo goal already mentioned.
• Then there’s me lighting candles, praying to idols and doing rain dances to bring myself an MFA acceptance letter. If I don’t get one I will have to have a Woah-Stop-Evaluate moment. Library science classes, anyone? That or radio intern, that was always fun.
• There’s other goals out there to be had, like losing a stone this year. Not because I’m British but because I think a stone is the most wonderfully awkward unit of weight. Anyway, weight isn’t my goal so much as working out more so that my knee hurts me less. I have my mother’s genetics to thank for the fact that I have never done anything mean to my knees and yet they hate me.
• Maybe I should also get a better aka "real" job. Attempts have been made: none successful.
• Writing! At least one hour straight daily. They say that if you make it a daily habit, that if you sit and write for a set amount of time even if you’re not inspired that you’re that much more productive when you are inspired, and that inspiration strikes that much more often. They (scientific researches this time) say that if you do something every day for 21 days it becomes a habit. Tangible goals: an hour+ per day on fiction and a story per month (length unimportant).
• Coffee!

If nothing else, the last item well definitely feature prominently in 2008.

Oddly enough tonight feels like it has more magic than New Year’s Eve did. Maybe because there’s a layer of snow on everything creating these great highlights and the sky shimmers back the street lights creating a grey-orange background to the night. Maybe it’s just that everything last night was about the end and tonight is all about the beginning of something. Either way I’m writing in the dark, because the dark preserves my view of the night out my window.

Pictures: top coffee stolen from Jud, snow = outside my house courtesy of my most awesome christmas camera.