The bitch in the bridal boutique

Here's a little story from this past weekend., typed as I rewatch back episodes of Covert Affairs from USA.

My friend asked me to be her maid of honor. She's the most low maintenence woman I know, so of course I agreed. We found her dress in December. My dress? I tried on a few in December. But all I remember from back then was being tired from hours at the store. Oh, and I remember feeling fat.

I decided that if I could lose weight on my own ... well six weeks and two pounds later I joined Jenny Craig. On their program I've lost 23 lbs. in three months. Thumbs up.

So 23 lbs. ligther and almost two dress sizes smaller, we went dress shopping again. Beforehand, we'd looked at all these dresses online. Dessy group seemed to be the best. Seemed. Ooh, here's a pretty dress. But you can't buy them online. You have to go to local bridal boutiques. And even if you could buy them online you'd want to try them on right? Right? Wrong. You'd try them on and you'd realize, hey this dress could work. It is not puke-on-a-stick. I would consent to being photographed in this dress. And then you would say: Okay, friend of mine, I will conscent to wear this during your wedding in the color of your choice since you're being gracious enough to offer me a choice of cut and design. And then you will talk to the bridal boutique attendant, and she will ruin your day.

You have a list of questions and concerns.  You have a specific situation that you're hoping the overpriced boutique will be specially able to cater to.  You will be told to shove it, but you don't know that yet.  You should know it from over hearing other people ask the attendants questions and listening to their replies.

Question: Have you had lots of requests for long sleeves because of Kate Middleton's dress?
Answer: Most wedding dresses are sleeveless, strapless gowns.

How is that answer even related to the question?  It isn't, and it's just a conversational question. It's not like they're challenging the stock the boutique carries or the attendant's taste.  And yet, the response is a non-response.  WTF is up with that?  Can't they answer the question?  Are people or aren't people asking about sleeves since Kate Middleton married Prince William?

Yet you proceed, thinking they will help you with your special situation.  You explain that you are undergoing a life transformation, aka a weight loss program.  That you've lost 25 lbs in three months and that you will be much smaller by your friend's October wedding and you're not certain how small.  You expect the bridal boutique attendant to understand that this is not something you're undergoing for your friend's wedding, but to better your life.  You expect the bridal boutique attendant to give you options, to weigh the pros and cons with you. To talk about the realities of dress ordering.

Instead the bridal boutique bitch tells you that you should have already ordered a dress if you want it for an October wedding.  That if you don't order it by May 19, they will have to add on a $60 rush charge and it will  take three months instead of four to get there.  That four months is not nearly enough time for the tailoring she expects you to do.

Four months? A Project Runway contestant pounds out a dress in 10 hours.  You're telling me your sweatshop in Asia can't?  It's an already designed dress made entirely of synthetic materials.  It's not like we have to wait for the worms to spin silk.  Nor is the weather affecting the cotton crop--it's just a gauzy version of polyester.  What kind of crack are these boutiques on?

Actually, I'm being too harsh.  You don't think of the sales chick as the boutique bitch . . . yet.  She's still the attendant.  The fact that she believes you will want to pay $70 to tailor a dress that costs $165 off the rack  makes her a capitalist, not a bitch.  So far.

But if I can walk into fucking Macy's and buy an $80 dress that fits beautifully, then I see no reason to indulge in price gouging--let alone tailoring fees--just because I'm supposed to dress in the same color as two other women who'll also carry flowers.

Still, I remain calm.  Until ...

Until I tell the bridal boutique attendant that I've lost 25 lbs and that I'll likely lose another 25 lbs before my friend's wedding because of my weight loss program.  I don't plug Jenny Craig to her by name because I felt that would be tacky.  Then the bridal boutique bitch says to me, "Well, if you feel confident in your program then we can order you the size down."

Bitch.

I've lost two dress sizes in three months.  You think that I have to be fucking "confident" that I'll go down just one more size in the next five months?

See this commission?  Wanna kiss it goodbye? Because it's gone.

That night while falling asleep I indulged in a bunch of mental eye rolling about how the skinny bitch has never gone up or down more than a size at a time and does not understand what it means to join the mother-f'ing-program.

You join the program. You pay the money. You get the results. Because if you don't get the results, you get to watch your money fly away on the wings you made for it.  Very good motivator.  And the program makes it easy to make your money work, not fly.

Anyway.  At the bridal boutique, my friend also tried on veils and tiaras.  The tiaras were atrocious.  Giant monstrous creations.  If you've always been a flowers and crowns kinda girl then maybe these would not be so bad. But this would be my friend's first tiara.  And since she's not marrying Prince William, she really shouldn't wear the things in the case.  (Although I'm certain Kate Middleton would have found the things in the case tacky even if she was marrying a commoner.)  Anyway.  My friend found a veil she loved which cost as much as her dress.  And we decided that she could not buy a veil for that price because you can't even wear a veil out in public on its own without being arrested and therefore you should not spend that much money on it.

"Hey," my friend said.  "What if we go to David's Bridal and see what tiaras and veils they have there?"

Long story shortened: we found a veil, a tiara and a brides maid's dress that we liked.  The people were also much more reasonable and much less bitchy.  And they'll get us our dress in (most likely) six weeks, not four fucking months.  So I've got more time to figure things out before I order.  And no boutique bitch to impede the process.

Sing Me the Writerly Blues

I've been feeling "out of it" for the past three weeks. Occasionally, a flurry of activity or excitement (like submissions going out or hearing that my story is now an opera) will distract me and I'll begin to think that I'm feeling better and that this depression-like-feeling is lifting. A few days later the feeling returns.

It's a feeling of being generally useless. It's inspired by grading student papers, by not grading student papers, by reading, by watching TV, by sitting at the keyboard and pulling 500 words out and feeling like there are no more to follow it. It's doubled by scanning the Amazon.com backlists of writers I enjoy. She kicks out how many books a year! no way! Not human.

I've come up with a couple theories of how I can break this feeling. That I can go out and take walks (very The Writer's Way of me) and that I can give myself an hour a day of story-writing-time. Except it's not the time that's the issue. I can find plenty of that to spare on all sorts of idleness.

I've said before that I cannot wait for this semester of grad school to be over, and I really, really mean it. There's only 20 days of it left.

I want, really, really want to write novels this summer. I attempted NaNoWriMo and JanNo and failed at both because of coursework. I just don't have enough time in the regular semester to devote the energy to a novel. Not even that it's the time (the time I can find) it's the energy that the novel takes. The thinking through and piecing together and really getting to know the characters I'm writing about -- that all takes mental energy or focus. And with so much coursework my focus shifts elsewhere several times a day and I get writerly-ADHD. I write (consistently) 500 word blocks of stories. At 500 words my mind blanks and wants, begs, throws a tantrum until I go on to something else.

I just don't know what to do with myself other than whine and wait out the next three weeks. However, it's going to be a scary three weeks: I've started to doubt my novel-ing ability given the novel-agony of the past few months. I just want a big ol' juicy project to really sink my teeth into. I like my short stories, yes, but I want to fall in love with my characters and that really doesn't happen for me in 10-30 pages worth of story. I know my short story characters but I do not care about them one way or another.

Short stories, in my humble opinion, are about craft and concept. They should be insanely well written and they should be intriguing. They should make the reader go hmm.

Novels are about storytelling. They are about finding people you would want take an eight hour car trip with and then doing so. Novels, no matter the genre, are about pure fantasy. A fantasy so real that as readers (and writers) we begin to love and hate the characters like they are people, like they are real, like they matter.

Those are the worlds I want to build. And I am terrified that as I gain the time to write at the end of this month, that I will not be able to be that storyteller.

What exactly are we saving?

"Save the Short Story" website -- again, I take issue with "saving" something that's been on the brink of extinction since the 1960s despite the dramatic increase in MFA programs churning out short stories, despite the rising number of independent lit magazines out there both in print and online; frankly it feels like adding the poodle to the endangered species list -- takes issue with agent Jeff Kleinman (by name) for his comments in the Jan/Feb 2009 Poets & Writers group interview of four "young literary agents."

1. That took freakin forever! Seriously. The rant against him went up on Feb. 3 ... but I read the article in Poets & Writers at Christmas. I actually had to hunt around my apartment for the magazine( it was buried under a stack of papers that need grading). All of a sudden, six weeks after the printing, there's issue being taken with it? Apparently not everyone got that whole "instant communication" memo regarding information and the use of the Internet.

2. The quoted statement was not that Kleinman hates the short story form but that they're boring and you [he] can't sell them in this market. I didn't find that whiny at all. Actually, I agreed with it.

First, it is hard to get involved in a new short story time and again. How much of yourself are you really willing to invest in a scene or setting or character that's not going to be around in twenty pages? If it disappoints you, there's no time, no place for it to make it up to you. It's a little bit like serial dating, knowing each time that you're never in it for the long haul. That wears on a person.

As a book-loving person, I need to say that I've only paid money for two single author short story collections in my life; both were required for class. I've checked a few dozen out of the library -- frequently collections by multiple authors like Best American Non-required Reading -- but I don't want to pay money for them any more than I want to pay for a box of chocolates I know is half coconut. When you don't end up finishing half the stories (chocolates) in the box, you really start to wonder why you paid for a whole box in the first place.

But that's only addressing the economic issue. I think the bigger issue is the fact that there's that much damn coconut.

I've had many discussions with Tanya over the past few months about this crazy notion that somehow got instilled in our brains: that to be "good" literary writers, to be "good" little MFAers, we have to write "serious" stories. So we kill off our characters, we rape them, we make them mentally unstable, we kill their kids, abort their babies, gag them when they should speak, we take away their money and hand them drug problems instead ... all because we need to be serious, serious, serious. We think we need to write about weighty topics in a nitty-gritty manner. It get so disgustingly realistic that we hit our readers' gag reflexes.

And, frankly, it pisses me off.

It also makes me not want to read short stories, because of the prevalence of this newspaper meets dirty realism stuff with a few hints of the insanely obscene thrown in. I just read a story in workshop where the narrator decides to tell the reader that his wife's nipples tasted like potato chips. Yeah. Not something I'm interested in paying money for.

Short story writers have been torturing the form for years -- not even Alice Munro is completely able to escape my scorn on this count. I'm sick of "art" being "what's good for you" not "what you enjoy." Why does the short story have to be dense and difficult? I know, I know, making every word count gets thrown around a lot, but why does counting mean it can't read easily? Why does making every word count have to taste like fiber supplement? Why are we drinking down heinous short stories saying it's good for us! when even real, honest to god fiber supplement is getting a face lift?

**(is coconut, by chance, fibrous? wouldn't it be sweet if it really was and all my half-ass, zany metaphors actually flowed together?)**

Are there some gems of short stories out there? Yes. I'm not debasing the form just what's been done to it. Those gems are far outweighed by tortured prose, much of it churned out by MFA programs instilling the same feeling in their students that's making me sick of "serious."

3. I take greater issue with agent Zuckerbrot's comment "[w]hat about the people who say, 'I don't have time to read a novel'? Short story collection! You can start and finish in a short period of time." I hate to point out the obvious here, but a 200 page short story collection takes as long (or longer) to read as a 200 page novel. Are we meant to assume that she meant you can finish a single short story in a short period of time? Yes. But if that's her point, then why buy a collection? Get a subscription to One Story they only send you one story a month. [The ex-law student in me refuses to let logic errors slip past.]



Are these nice things I'm saying about short story collections? No. But I'm sick of the fiber's good for you! pep talk the short story gets. If it tastes like bark, I'm not eating it. If it reads like bark, I'm not reading it.

Am I still writing short stories? I have to; I'm being graded on it. But I don't think I've ever thought of myself as a "short story-ist." I'm a writer, and the short form is a place where I can gain the technical skills to do so.

--

In more upbeat news from the same edition of P&W, one of the 12 featured "debut poets" is giving a reading at WMU this spring. Jericho Brown will be reading from his collection Please. I've requested the collection (again, from the library) and hopefully I'll get a look at it before the reading.

Writing: Art, Craft and Beauty

From the comments to yesterday's post:

Blogger Guerilla Grodd said...
A few weeks ago I was talking to my buddy Gordon, who is a very gifted composer. We were discussing the ongoing debate about the "art" of composing. What is the purpose of music? Is it a pure art form, or does it require a degree of accessibility for the listener? Can a piece of music be commercially viable AND artistically relevant? For whom is music written, the composer or the listener? I think this conundrum is also applicable to writing.

I sat down to address this comment with a firm notion of where I was going with my response. I was going to define "art" as per the academy and then I was going to talk about "craft" and then "beauty" because that "beauty" is where the soul lives. But then I choked. I couldn't get the first part down. I just sat here and turned one question over in my mind: What the fuck is art?

There's art for the sake of art -- although given that I can't find a definition of art that I believe both logically and intuitively in relation to any form of composition, we're going to have to gloss that phrase as meaning there is a reason for doing technically difficult stuff and that reason is that it's technically difficult.

I suppose that's akin to why Olympic athletes choose to do vaults or high dives that are worth a possible 10 points or a possible 9.9 instead of ones they know they can accomplish that are only worth a possible 9.6. But when they're spinning and flipping that fast all I know is that they are air born and that gravity will shortly end their flight. I only know if something went wrong when they don't stick the landing -- or because the commentators told me so. Dangerous, that last one is.

Anyway, I started this because I truly believe the purpose of writing is to produce joy, awe, wonder, to share a moment with the reader and give them something beautiful. That beauty could be sad beauty. It could be comic beauty. It could be poetic, assonance filled literary beauty. It could be scary beauty, or troubling beauty, or whimsical beauty.

I stopped myself short of sleeping beauty so we can all rest easy now that I've admitted my near miss of a bad pun.

Should writing entertain? Entertainment in that sense is a form of beauty, so why not? Should it accomplish other goals? Why not?

For whom should it be accessible? Well it damn well needs to be accessible for the author. I just finished that Nancy Kress interview in The Writer's Chronicle, and that interviewer harps on the woman constantly about "conscious decisions" in regard to genre, content and market needs/demands, and Kress seemed to get really testy because there are only so many ways she can say I wrote whatever came to my mind, I wrote in genres I had read, although I read almost every genre but romance; I didn't pick science fiction writing to make a career of, it happened simply because I was passionate.

Writing that is passionate is ten times closer to beauty, ten times closer to art than writing that is rote and dry because it is what someone else wants.

There's many an agent out there on the internet writing blogs saying yes, this is hot on the market right now, but don't write another novel just like [Twilight] just because it's hot; your novel will be stilted, boring, and the world will move on without your unimpassioned novel.

I'm here to go against the writing of the academy (a notion of contemporary fiction fashioned forty years ago as "artistic" and unanalyzed ever since) and say that writing to the academy simply for the sake of garnering their approval is exactly like writing another Twilight knock-off.

Specifically to Tanya and others in her crises: I think there is a great deal to be gained from learning how to do "academy approved" writing in an MFA program, but that doesn't mean that this is the type of writing you should be doing, nor the type of writing you need to do for the rest of your life.

Blogger Guerilla Grodd said...
... As artists, we can all study the "how" of our respective disciplines, but often we are not quite sure of the "why."

The "why" needs to be because we love it. Otherwise we're doing a whole lot of work for a very tiny profit that we do not give a damn about.

Sucks All the Energy Outta Ya

A post by Tanya recently got me thinking, and the fact that I read it Monday night after my workshop for the week got me writing this post.

The MFA workshop sucks the energy right out of you.

Most weeks I leave and all I want to do is put on my sweats and pour myself a drink.

The one time I walked away feeling truly energized was the week my story was critiqued by the group. I had all these new ideas for where to take the story and how to build my modest story (which I thought was finished) into something really cool. And then I read the written comments and that bubble burst but that's another story for another day.

I don't really have the problem where increased knowledge of writing and how it works correlating with decreased reading pleasure. Yes, I notice theme more readily now and I'm much more aware of the mechanics behind the work that the author has employed -- reading The List after taking Tara Ison's workshop I could totally see all the elements of structure she taught us about employed in her novel -- but that is fascinating in the same way that learning how movie special effects is fascinating; it still looks lifelike on the screen even when I know how it's done.

Any thing much deeper than that doesn't occur to me when I'm in the middle of reading.

In the midst of reading I love being caught up in the moment, in the emotion, in the beauty of imagery or the tension of the conflict and I stay right there with the story unless the author breaks it for some reason. This is what I refer to as the joy and wonder of reading. What is referred to in a recent edition of the Writer's Chronicle as "good storytelling" (and how it is frequently missing even unadulterated literary writing). I rarely develop any sort of notion for analysis (psycho, literary or otherwise) during these read through and keep myself wholly focused on the wonder of an unknown story. Then if I sit down and care to still think about it after I'm done reading I'll find myself able to draw those analytical conclusions.

For workshop: I read; I experience the joy of the unknown story (usually); and then, I sit and analyze. I analyze whether the mechanics worked and I analyze some deeper level of the story to see if it's there and see if I don't have any comments that could help the author in later drafts develop one. Although, I firmly believe that a moving, emotionally engaging, well told story doesn't need overt levels of meaning and that the author shouldn't try for them consciously. The four levels of allegory are what high school English teachers apply to fiction; they are not present when the writer writes.

Then, in workshop, the class destroys my joy. My awe. And any sense of wonder I may have had in reading.

They are overly critical and cynical (and rightly so, they know what a shortcut looks like because they've tried them). They've read a lot. Most of them, myself included, either read slush for a literary magazine or they work as an editor on the program's literary mag. They've seen a lot of "good" stuff and they've seen a lot of crap. This leads them to viciously attack anything they perceive as a weakness in the story.

No, workshop is not for the tenderhearted.

They do it in the name of what doesn't kill a story in workshop makes it stronger in the next draft, but, all the same, I'm glad I'm not asked to reread these same drafts after we've workshopped them because there is no joy left in reading it once it's been beaten and snapped at from all angles.

One form of badgering that has become particularly prevelant (and disturbing to me) is the use of the word "device." Every element of a story is now referred to as a "device." If it is what happens between the beginning and informs how we get to the important part or why the important part even happens, it's a "device." Occasionally it's a "good" term: the author used a really subtle device here. But it never feels like a good term, it feels like the naming of a cheap trick. Someone used it last night, and suddenly the story we workshopped (not mine) felt less like this heart wrenching slice of life in the world of a widower and deer hunter and more like a clock, or robot, or remote control. Device.

Maybe "device" is an appropriate word though. Given how we discuss stories and the kind of suggestions these writers make it seems more like they view themselves as builders, tinkers and puppet masters. They want to see how they can engineer a character's past and his emotions to make a better mouse trap.

What should a writer be?

I don't know. And I don't want to be prescriptive about it.

At times I find Natalie Goldberg's zen based writing philosophy too zen for me and yet I do not enjoy the writer-as-engineer philosophy either. There has to be some happy medium, don't you think?

Perhaps this is why I find myself ever more interested in writing good genre fiction opposed to bad literary fiction (see Writer's Chronicle interview with Nancy Kress and Poets & Writer's article by Mike Chasar, available in print only): because the genre writers are storytellers, they harken back to that ethnological desire of ours to spin tales, that biological need to relate to others even if only through the page.

Apartment Hunting

I have no literary insight for the day but I have an apartment! And it's pretty nice. Tiny but nice.

This past Saturday I started physically apartment hunting. My father and I drove over to Kalamazoo to do the physical leg work. These are the moments I'm glad I'm going across state and not across country. (Although Tanya seems to have had luck so far - which is fabulous because I'd be a nervous wreck if I was trying to rent in NH right now.)

The night before we went I was on the computer showing my father the listing that I had made arrangements to see (I was hoping just to show up and scout the others because they were larger complexes) when my father's girlfriend rang the doorbell. [We don't like her.] And she gave me the name of some property that I then had to look up while she stood in the kitchen with me and it's WAAAAY out of my price range. Seriously, what kind of college student lives there? But supposedly her hair dresser's son had lived there several years ago when he was a student. Hmm. Sure. Whatever. For the price of a one bedroom I could have a two all to myself and be a helluva lot closer to campus.

But I digress...

What really got to me was when she stated how exciting this all was. Which I thoroughly have to disagree with. It's stressful and time consuming. It's work. And once I make a decision there's more work. Calls-to-utility-people work. Packing-logic-and-logistics work. Physical-moving-and-lifting work. Then there's living with my decision and hoping it's a good one.

It's not exciting. It's work.

This is new for me. I've been a strictly dorm, sorority, campus housing-apartment kind of girl. That's why the parental unit is coming along for the ride. He volunteered before I even asked but that's probably a smart thing. But there were no decisions made over the weekend. There were a couple possibilities but we weren't sold on anything. Drove back over today, this time with the mother-parental unit and found something lovely.

It'll cost me a little more and it's smaller than my other choice, but I like the area and it's new construction and nice interior as well as within close walking distance of the end of campus I'll need to get to. After I sign, my father goes and asks if I'm planning on walking back from my night classes as well as the day and all I could do was blink. Obviously I'm planning on that. It's a ten minute walk (which, depending on the day is about the same to get to the farthest parking lot), swarming with students and if I could do it in down town Chicago I can do it in the generic frickin Midwest. If he's concerned I can get some pepper spray to go with my don't-fuck-with-me stare. I'm good at that stare. I even had a self-defense instructor tell me so.

So I've gone and signed my first real lease. Strange. I have friends with mortgages, friend's who are married, friends with kids, and here I am just now signing my first lease with a non-university.

One more step closer to my MFA.

I'm wondering if this whole "taking steps" thing is less of a walk or a journey and more of a dance. That would account for the whole two steps forward one step back feeling that you get sometimes. And the twirling. Damn, there's a lot of twirling.

Blindsided

I really didn't think I could have anything more about the situation with the father's gf to complain about, but apparently I do.

He told me Thursday night -- four nights after coming back from visiting his family and the road trip less envied -- that we needed to talk about it.

What was his delay for? I have no idea. He certainly seemed fine with it on Tuesday when we went out to sushi.

But what do I get zinged with last night? That I haven't liked anyone he's dated and that I'm behaving like a spoiled only child whose world is being messed with causing her petulant behavior and that my father is upset with my slighting these women in their presence.

Which is a crock of shit.

I refuse to pay now for my uneasiness with him dating when I was a teenager. I was a teenager. I was completely absorbed in myself and my world and he was rocking the boat. At that point we basically came to the understanding that I didn't want to hear about it.

But he's been dating since I went away to college and now after I've finished undergrad. BFD. I've always been nice to these women and if I ever lacked social graces toward them it wasn't because of their role as the gf, it was because I lacked social graces.

But more than anything I'm angry that I've been slighted and categorized into some psycho-babble self-help parenting book bullshit explanation. I deserve better than that. I can't believe this shit. I can't believe that he would assume my dislike for a person springs from selfishness. I thought perhaps he could trust me that when I disliked a person I have a reason. In this case, reasons.

Instead my father tells me "well this is what it looks like to me."

I do not dislike this woman because of the role she plays in my life, I dislike her because she's friggin neurotic.

I do not dislike IRS agents because they are in charge of collecting my taxes.

When I met her, I was nice. When I went out to dinner with her, I thought she was nice. She seemed nice when she was my father's girlfriend. But now that she's neurotic lady I'm not so much a fan.

I could care less about whether this woman stays or goes, after all I'm going. New grad school, new city. I've got less than four months at my current address. She doesn't affect my life. But after this little ray of sunshine was dropped on me I don't want anything to do with her. And I certainly don't want her to think I'm going to bond with her over shoe shopping and be the proxy daughter for the one living in North Carolina. Now I'm pissed.

Where have I gone?

There's been a lull in my blogging over the past week and I apologize.

I had one hell of a weekend. I wish I could say that I went on a bender. Or that I spent the first half of this week recovering from the effects of copious amounts of alcohol. But both would be lies. The only drugs involved was some Ibuprofen to ease my jaw after 72 hours of grinding my teeth together.

I went into north country (where there's still some snow clinging to the ground) to visit my grandmother and other members of my extended family. Which is normally a wonderful thing. I haven't been to see them since my uncle passed away. I like getting to see these people and the chance only presents itself every few months, if that, so I jumped at it.

This time was different. This was the trip where my father was introducing his new girlfriend to his family.

I think I need to start with a statement of my take on the situation as the child of divorced parents. My parents have been divorced for going on 11 years and I already went through the process of my mother dating and remarrying. Dad's been dating on and off for years as well. I'm cool with it. Whatever. In theory it makes you hopeful about the world, that no matter what your age is that you can still go out and find someone that you get along with and that likes you back. In theory.

Now, as for this new woman. She's nice enough. On first impression she's lovely even if she does talk way too damn softly. Having a conversation with her in a crowded restaurant makes you want to sign up for a hearing aid.

But the more time I've spent with her the more neurotic I've discovered her to be.

At first I thought that I would make her into a character in one of my stories. Someone who is afraid of shiny things like coffee cups with enamel and kids toys that light up because she thinks they're more radioactive than other coffee cups and other children's toys that aren't shiny. Someone who doesn't trust bridges that are held together by rivets.

I figured that those two things together could make an interesting sketch of a character. But then the list of things that have traumatized her kept growing to the point where she wouldn't be a believable character anymore. (Monk aside.)

She was traumatized by Dr. Seuss books. Really? Not as a child but as a grown woman reading them to her kids. She got the words and rhythm of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish stuck in her head and couldn't sleep. Thus trauma. Sacrilege! She recited probably a dozen lines of One Fish, Two Fish to me in demonstration of why it was traumatic. I just sat there saying "I don't understand" which caused her to recite more lines. "I don't understand." To which she wailed "It got stuck in my head!"

*crickets chirping*

I'm left to assume that prior to reading Dr. Seuss she never had a song stuck in her head. But even then, I struggle to see what the hardship is here.

She also ruined two books for me this weekend.

She's the kind of woman who has spent too much of her life in the suburbs and therefore thinks she should be reading a certain kind of book and that everything else is "fluff." Okay fine whatever. I'm not going to rail against the notion as I might very well someday have that kind of woman as an audience but I still think it's awful to start telling someone about what an interesting book you've read by telling them the entire frickin plot. So I got the cliff notes version of Middlesex without any of the beauty, subtlety or nuance that the author spent all those years creating. Joy. I feel so enriched.

She did the same with The Memory Keeper's Daughter.

She's freaked out about being old. And then she made some awful comments about it in front of my almost 76 year-old grandmother. Including one about being put in a home which made me stiffen my spine and glare. She also pouts when my 14 year-old cousins refer to "old people" indirectly. Get over it - you're four times their age, they'll never think of you as young, they already think of me as old.

As this was a four hour road trip each way there were the necessary park and pee stops. As I've done this quite a few times I take note of the good the bad and the ugly and try to stop only at the good. But this is north country and generally your options are limited once you get off the closed access highways with their state run roadside reststops. But the creme de la creme of north country McDonald's bathrooms were "disturbing on so many levels." I COULDN'T BELIEVE IT! It was sanitary, recently cleaned, nothing on the floor, not falling apart, didn't smell bad, had your own stall with working locks. But apparently when one toilet flushed the water coming out of the faucet temporarily cut out. THIS WAS HER COMPLAINT! Darn. A bathroom system with one intake pipe. Wow. Really disturbing.

Then she got "concerned" about the food handlers not wearing gloves. We're talking about the people who all they do is put together the food, wrap it and hand it off to the next guy. These people do not handle money and they do not interact with the public. Dad -- the germ doctor -- tells her that it's no big deal so long as they wash their hands.

"But what about germs under the finger nails?" she asks.

She has spent waaaaaay too much time in suburbia. And she obviously is on a look the other way basis with all of her fancy restaurant food because I'm telling you right now that those people don't wear gloves either.

There are germs on everything and you'll never get away from all of the germs. Basically washing hands is just to make sure that fecal matter doesn't make it into your food, but we don't tell her this part. I would have loved to though. I would have loved to elaborate on the fact that the body is a wonderful thing in that it kills almost all the germs we put into it.

OH! And now she thinks we're a hugging family.

We are sooo not a hugging family.

Okay, I hug my grandmother and my aunt when I see them because I haven't seen them in three months. And on the day I leave I hug them again because I won't see them for another three to six months. It's a long term departure thing, not an everyday thing. But apparently we're now a "hugging family" just because my aunt wouldn't shake her hand.

So now she wants to hug goodbye. Like, goodnight. Everynight. NO! No, no! At the end of the trip she goes to hug me and all I can think is this had better be a sign that you're leaving the country for a couple of weeks because you should so not be hugging me for anything less.

And she's one of those attack huggers. She doesn't stretch out an arm and lean into it. She doesn't wave you over. Doesn't stand up straight and do the back pat thing. No, she launches herself at you. Headfirst. Whole torso angled toward you, feet taking quick little steps to catch you before you get away. She springs at you and hooks you into this leaning hug and it freaks me out. She starts her approach and I freeze. I suddenly know what it's like to be a rabbit knowing something is coming after you.

I don't like hugging strangers.

Groundhog Day

I think I understand the appeal of Punxsutawney Phil's life choice. He's not one of these New Year's Resolutions kinda guys. No, he waits it out until the craze is over, until most resolutions are broken and the majority of Americans have already quit dieting. That's when he comes out and reassesses his situation. Me? I've come out of my JanNoWriMo writing cave, taken a look around, accessed my real life situation and decided that shadow or no, I want back in my cave.

I love the intensity with which I threw myself into my 50,000 word goal. But without that intensity what do I have to fill my spare hours? Not too much that I'm proud of. Do you know what kind of crap is on TV these days? Have you ever seen an episode of "Extreme Makeover"? Omigd! Scary! But you stay glued to it like a train wreck. I'm fed up with TV. The writer's strike needs to be over now! End the reality TV madness! Bring me back sitcoms and dramas!

It took me about 48 hours to realize I was happier and healthier writing all the time than I was during my mental "break" from writing. I also downed a scary amount of refined carbs during that first 24 hours that quickly left me feeling weak and tired.

Refined carbs + boredom + "Extreme Makeover" = Ug.

Now if only I could find someway to make guys wear top hats and bow ties as part of my announcement that I am once again retreating into my Cave o' Writing for at least the next six weeks.

By the way, Punxsutawney saw his shadow too. We're both digging in for the rest of Winter.

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.