Everything I Know About Character, I Learned on the Playground

It’s a fact of life, if you play your hardest, your ass is going to hit the blacktop. If the fall is bad enough to break something, you’re allowed to cry for a minute or two. Otherwise, rub some dirt on it and get back in the game.

Most games are full of bad calls. You’d take the ones that go in your favor easy enough.
Don’t whine about the ones that go against you.

Nobody likes a snitch. Not even the teachers.

You’ll never feel good about a game you had to win by cheating.

Nobody likes to lose, but it’s way more fun with friends on your team to laugh with.

Not all of the “Teacher’s Rules” apply. Sometimes they’re just plain stupid. Never hurt a
friend to follow a rule.

You’ll find a lot of friends to laugh with, and lots more when you have something to
share. But the best friends are the ones who are still on your side, even when you’re dead wrong.

Nice guys really do finish last a lot of the time. But they’d feel a lot worse finishing first if they had to be a son of a bitch to do it.

Gum, candy, and any other contraband that’s against the rules always taste sweeter
when you’ve got a buddy to share it with.

A quick wit, when used properly, can garner you more attention than looks or money.

A quick wit, when not used properly, will teach you how to fight.

There is no “Time Out” in a fight. There are also no rules. The only real aim is to
be the last one standing, so know what you’re getting into before you run your
mouth or swing. (Fight stories always sound way cooler than a black eye feels).

Sometimes the kid picked last for a team will be the one who wins the game. Never discount anyone.

You’re not going to be the best at everything, but most of the kids around you are too
busy worrying about how good they’re doing to notice anyway.

The most genuine people are the ones who do their good deeds by stealth. Don’t put too much faith in the guy who does you a favor, but reminds you of it in front of others.

Trying to make someone feel small makes you smaller.

Never pick on the weaker kid. You might get lucky enough to have a bunch of people around you that won’t stand up for him, but they’ll secretly wish a bigger kid pummels you later. Eventually they’ll all be bigger kids.

Sometimes doing the right thing will get you in trouble. Better to take a punishment than to have to live with not doing the right thing.

As you can tell, we cursed a bit on my playground. And to be honest, everything I learned about character I learned from my father first – life just has a way of reinforcing its truths. And it’s really never more honest than it was in the beginning, before people start holding their tongues to stay polite.

Which bit of character did you pick up on the playground?

Quiet Integrity (Happy Holidays)

The company I work for is a family owned business, so the Christmas party was a small affair at my boss’s house.  Sitting around the table, exchanging stories, the writer in me was keenly reminded that each of us has stories, and each person in our circle encompasses some role, often becoming the hero of a funny anecdote or personal family gem.

Generally, each person in our circle serves some larger purpose that we don’t even pay very much attention to on a regular basis.  There’s always the one person who can be called upon, day or night, who would give you everything they have because you need it.  There’s always one person everyone gravitates to, sometimes fun or childish or just charismatic.  There are as many labels as you can think of but, for the most part, any community only works as well as each of the members.  Humanity’s an odd beast.  It takes advantage of the weak and feeds off the charitable, and it never ceases to amaze me how often people mistake kindness for weakness.

When I tell stories about my family, whether they’re tales from my own childhood or those of my children, I almost always tell the funny ones.  You’ll hear me mention Gracie Girl perhaps the most, because she’s a smart ass.  She supplies ample material for daily comedy.  Littlest Guy will get many a mention as well – he has that spark, that intangible thing that makes people gravitate to him.  You could see it in him from day one, children flock to him and adults adore him. 

I think when you prefer to laugh, or want something light hearted and fun, those are the kind of personalities that make for good heroes.

My oldest son has always been quiet and more to himself.  He’s quick and intelligent, but doesn’t often seek out a spotlight.  There are home movies from his 3^rd birthday – throughout the entire video, Gracie girl is right in front of the camera, singing and prancing and telling jokes.  Littlest guy is babbling and grinning and charming the hell out of everyone.  And there’s Johnny, off in the background, playing with a car he got as a present… and when his one year old brother came up to where he was playing, Johnny handed him the car and showed him how to do it.

People are always telling me how thoughtful and polite he is, as if I have anything to do with it.  He was gifted with a generous soul.  It’s not something I did as a parent, it’s intrinsically who he is.

There was the time I had all three of them lined up to find out who did something.  I don’t even remember what it was, but all three of them said the universal “I don’t know”.  At a loss for what to do, I grounded all three of them.  Johnny said, “Sorry, Mom.  I did it.  Gracie and DJ shouldn’t have to be grounded, too.”

I found out way later that his little brother did it, Johnny just said he did and took the punishment for him.  You can teach a kid not to snitch, but you can’t teach that.

A few Christmases ago, Santa got a new Nintendo DS for Johnny.  His brother broke his a few months prior, and he was way worse on those things than Johnny ever had been – Johnny’s a kid you never have to tell to take care of his things or do his homework.  So Santa figured, Johnny should get the new one, and DJ could get Johnny’s old one.  A few days before Christmas, DJ broke Johnny’s Nintendo.  Santa didn’t have the time or funds to get two, so I kinda figured, Johnny gets the new one and I knew he’d share, and then DJ could get one for his birthday.

Christmas morning, we all came down and there, with DJ’s toys from Santa, was the brand new Nintendo.  Johnny got up earlier than everyone else, and moved it to DJ’s pile.  He said Santa must’ve made a mistake because DJ wanted one so much more than he did.

In the grand circle of things, I can see him being the ant – all the grasshoppers are out playing while he works and saves, and then he gives them anything they need because they need it, without taking anything for himself.  He reminds me of Beth, from Little Women, who always tugged at my heart more than any other character.

And I worry about him being taken advantage of, because people don’t see kindness for what it is, and they don’t understand generosity for its own sake.  But when I get past the lump in my throat at anything that might hurt him, I hope he never loses that.

Maybe the world would be a better place if we prized quiet integrity more than witty quips.

I Haven't Been Writing

I haven’t been writing.

I’ve been paging in at blogs that used to be my regular habitat… like a voyeur… staring in through windows.  Some of them stained glass and breathtaking, some with gell clings letting light shine through in colorful splashes, some quaint, some gritty, and all beautiful.

I was out with a friend a few weeks back and someone asked me what I did for a living, and I kind of froze… trying I guess to figure out how to explain my job, which encompasses a lot of things, from data entry to report coallation to web design… and my friend said, “She’s a writer.” 

I swear to you, I turned around to see who the hell she was talking about.

Oh, yeah.  Me.  I think that’s me.  Or it used to be me.

I’ve done that a few times over the past few months – paged up old blogs or facebook statuses, and read something I said a year ago… and then I remember, I was a writer.  I’ve picked up books, and fallen into them like I’ve found the only place that I could ever rest my head, and then I remember, oh yeah, I was a writer.  In the middle of a rather hectic day, with no break in sight, brand new shiny idea popped right into my head, like the urge to get these people down on the page never abandoned me… of course, I couldn’t stop what I was doing to encourage it, but still, it was better than the silence.

Oh my God the fucking silence. 

If any of you ever heard of Padre Pio, he was a monk, now a saint… I once read that he said he knew what hell was.  It wasn’t fire and brimstone and demons assailing you.  It was the absence of God.  It was not being able to feel Him, to hear Him, to know He was with you.  It was the silence.

And I’m sure some people will read this and think, “Really, you’re comparing telling stories to God?”  Yeah, I am.  And it’s not some sappy bit about the muse being divine and these stories being salvation… but the absence of it, the loss of that compulsion, it’s like they took all the air out of the room.  You don’t even think about air when you’re breathing fine, it’s about the only thing you can think of when you’re drowning, though.

There are a million lofty sentiments people throw at you when you’re not doing so well.  “God never gives you more than you can handle.”

The fuck He doesn’t.  Why do you think people drink themselves stupid or throw themselves in front of trains?  More than they could handle, I’d say.  And I used to think, somewhere deep down where the real scared little shit who makes up excuses for why the boogy man could never get me lives, that those people were weak, or quitters, or something.  Something I wasn’t.

I always love stories about underdogs.  I love it, in real life and in fiction, when someone beats the odds, fights their way through, finds their happy ending against great odds. No one ever tells you how to see the beauty in failing.  The truth is, most people fail.  Some gracefully, some kicking and screaming, some taking as many people with them as they can grab onto.

So the blog’s been silent.  My head’s been silent.  Maybe it’s just a down cycle… or a reflective year.  And I don’t think I care so much if I fail anymore… but I’d really rather do it with the voices in my head chattering away again.

Guest Post - Mark Terry (bet you wished he was at YOUR blog...)

Today, as a special treat, Mark Terry is guest posting at the blog. I have an awesome photo in which he looks quite handsome and writerly and such, but blogger's being a bitch, so you guys miss out...sorry.... I did, however, get it to post the cover for his latest release, THE VALLEY OF SHADOWS. I'm not going to take up much of your time with a long and winding introduction about how unbelievably brilliant he is - his writing more than speaks for itself... so go ahead, read the blog...

Snakes on Brokeback Mountain

Mark Terry

I have on more than one occasion thought back to an interview given by Samuel L. Jackson when he was promoting, "Snakes On A Plane." The interviewers kept sort of prodding him about the seriousness of the role, and at some point, partly in frustration, he said, "Look, we're not talking 'Snakes On Brokeback Mountain.' We're talking 'Snakes On A Plane.'"

This resonated strongly with me, especially after I stopped laughing. Because what Samuel L. Jackson was saying was, "We're not talking about a movie likely to win the Academy Awards or go down in film history as a great work of art. It's a horror movie!"

I recently read a Vanity Fair (or perhaps it was Esquire) piece on Jake Gyllenhaal promoting “Source Code.” Someone in the article noted that Jake was a really, really serious actor with a lot of very serious ambitions, but at some point during the filming of “The Day After Tomorrow” somebody took him aside and said, “Jake, take off the tuxedo and stop practicing your acceptance speech. We’re making a disaster film here.”

And one of the reasons it resonates with me is that sometimes critics don't get it. One of my key criteria when I reviewed books was: "Did the author accomplish what they were trying to accomplish?"

So if you're writing an adventure novel and it's not exciting, but it sure has plenty of imagery and symbolism and seems "literary," I can't help but feel the author may have missed the point. Example: "The Crown of Columbus," by Louise Erdich and Michael Dorris. This story is about a historian (I think) who may have clues to where a "crown" of some sort is hidden that Christopher Columbus brought with him while exploring the New World. In point of fact, the crown is the crown of thorns that Christ wore when he was crucified. This novel had all the makings of "The Da Vinci Code" only it was written about 15 years earlier, and although the writing was without a doubt better than Dan Brown's, it was not, to my mind, a better book. Why? Because the authors had a different agenda than writing an adventure novel. They were writing a mainstream "literary" novel and as a result, the novel seemed schizophrenic and didn't - to my mind - succeed as either thing. It sure as hell wasn't "thrilling" or "exciting" or an "adventure." But critics liked it and so did plenty of readers who knew what they were getting.

I don't want to get too much into the art versus commerce argument here, although I actually have pretty strong opinions on the subject. But I do want to make a point. The process is almost entirely identifical.

Let me say that again: The process of creating art and creating a commercial book (movie, etc) is almost completely identical.

The process that Samuel L. Jackson and the director and the writer and all the other actors in "Snakes On A Plane" took is almost entirely identical to the process they would take if they had been making "Ghandi" or "Brokeback Mountain" or "Casablanca."

Yes, it's possible people will walk their way through their work. Yes, it's possible they'll do it entirely for money.

My point here is when Samuel L. and company decided to make "Snakes On A Plane" they decided they wanted a film that was scary and fun and thrilling and suspenseful and funny and designed to give laughs and shivers and screams, etc.

When everybody concerned went about making "Brokeback Mountain," they weren't looking to make scary and fun and thrilling and suspenseful; they were intent on raising another set of emotions and moving people to think and to feel a certain thing.

The PROCESS is essentially the same. The INTENTION is different.

And for the record, I've never seen "Brokeback Mountain," because it's not my type of movie, ie., a romance (the gay theme doesn't bother me). I love romantic comedies, but straight romances, like "The Horse Whisperer" leave me cold. For that matter, I’ve never seen "Snakes On A Plane." Although I love thrillers, I hate snakes. Yeah, me and Indiana Jones. Although the snakes in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" don't bother me that much, I can guarantee you that I would have a hard time with "Snakes On A Plane" and all its POV shots of slithering snakes. It's a family joke: "Let's drag Dad into the reptile house at the Detroit Zoo."

Pssssst - Thank you, Mark, for taking the time to write such an awesome article for my little blog...

I'm sure Mark will be by in comments, so please feel free to extend the conversation - I loves that...

How Do You Know When You've Found Your Voice?

There’s a lot about writing that seems almost mystical – to people who don’t write, and even to those of us breathing in this damn, frustrating, lovely, mind-sucking, hole of death what we call writing.

One of the things you hear most often is VOICE. Big sparkly letters here, because that’s the onus us writing folk put on voice. It’s kind of like literary fiction – no one can tell you how to do it, but we sure the fuck know it when we see it. And then we get even more confusing about it – insisting that an author not only capture his or her own distinctive voice, but also capture each character’s voice. And the character’s voice has to be separate from the writer’s voice… and each character has to have their own voice so that you don’t have cardboard bullshit characters… oh, and don’t use any petty trickery or overused catch-phrases so that your reader literally rolls their eyes and tosses your book in a moldy laundry pile rather than finish it. We talk non-stop about craft and technique and grammar. We beat other works about the head and ears for feats of stupidity or, worse, purple prose.

Can you hear my voice? I bet you can. I can. I know it’s there and I know what it sounds like and guess what – it’s grammatically flawed as all hell. It doesn’t follow any of the rules. Okay, it follows some of the rules, but mostly by accident. You get to a point where you know them backwards and forwards and have to toss them out the window to get comfortable in your skin and say what you have to say. Because the bottom line in voice is communication. That’s it – plain and simple.

That’s all this really is – saying something. Saying something important, life changing, immortal, embarrassing, consuming, eloquent, clever, or blatant… I like blatant, myself. It often has a dry wit all its own. That’s all we’re trying to do here, whether it’s through articles or blog posts or works of fiction. We’re saying something – and in order to communicate, if you’re really good at it, you need to make sure your audience gets it. If your audience is full of high brow fancy schmancy types… go get a thesaurus so they don’t feel slighted by your mundane language – and leave your fucking profanity at the door. If your audience is full of deep thinkers, be more concerned with the ideas than the way they’re couched – deep thinkers don’t care what it looks like to the outside world. They’re not in it to impress anyone else. They want the essence of a story or idea that will make their mind take off… say it in pig latin, if it’s brilliant, they’ll still go with you.

But what you’re saying seems beside the point when you’re talking about voice, right? It’s part of it, but I’ll get back to that. Voice is most often categorized as the flavor of the way you say things, kind of like an accent on the page. And yeah, I can hear New York or Southern Charm, or an Irish Brogue. But it’s not just that.

Remember when you were in high school? Remember when you wanted all the cool kids to like you, or when you started digging combat boots and dyed your hair and spoke in Violent Femmes lyrics? Remember when you stole little phrases from rock stars or friends that were just too fucking cool? Remember that kid, teetering on the curb, trying to get his bearings and up his courage to walk in the middle of the road, pretty as you fucking please? That kid. The one who wanted to be someone special, but didn’t know quite how to get there so he borrowed bits from here and there and adapted other bits that might have been his or maybe they were scrapped up from somewhere else… and he wore them like a mantle of independent thinking – just like everybody else.

Yeah, well if your voice is that – you’re doing it wrong.

The problem with that kid is he was playing at being someone other people might admire. He wasn’t there yet. His confidence was low and his braggadocio was borrowed. That’s not where your voice comes from. You can’t borrow someone else’s… scratch that, you can, actually… if you’ve got a really good ear for language (and if you’re a writer, we’ll assume that you do), you can, in fact, mimic another writer… another person… adopt it and wear it and put it out there… but you won’t have developed YOUR voice.

And they’ll tell you that no one can help you find your voice. There are no instructions to get there or develop it or bring it out. Which is probably true – every journey seems to be as different as every writer. A writer friend recently told me that he could tell that I turned a corner. That my writing voice was the strongest he’d ever seen it. That I was ready. And I think I am. I am more confident in my writing and my voice than I ever was before. So how did I get there? I stopped giving a shit about any of the people who were not going to “get” me. That was it. That simple. I stopped tempering my language because people who don’t know me might mistake my profanity for ignorance. I stopped rethinking overlarge words that fit or mundane words that weren’t impressive enough, and I said what I had to say… and then I edited the hell out of it. (Anyone who tells you voice is natural and comes with no editing is a moron… writing is more editing than writing… when I find a writer who doesn’t follow that, I don’t want to read them.)

Oh, and what you have to say… remember? I said we’d get back to that. Voice and theme go hand in hand as far as I can tell. And some writers have more than one theme that they work with, some may not pay any attention to it at all… they’re just telling a story and don’t notice that their stories all have the same finite number of themes. YOU have something to say. You wouldn’t be writing if you didn’t have anything to say. There is something deeper to this profession than sheer love of words… and yeah, that’s part of it, but it’s not the whole. If I only loved the words, I’d be perfectly content to devour great works by other authors. But it’s not only that with us, we have something to say, and that something, whether deep or frivolous, something to move us or move mountains, something just to make us laugh, that’s as imperative to our voice as the way we turn a phrase. You just can’t have a voice with nothing to vocalize… it would just be a hum, or a moan, or a whimper.

So how did you find your voice? And what have you got to say? Figured out your themes yet?

Manufacturing Time

Some time ago, the awesomeness that is Stephen Parrish, posted a personal story and asked for his readers’ stories in return. I read his post and it moved me, and instead of posting, I sent him an email… the funny thing was, as I was sending him an essay length personal story for no reason other than it struck me, Stephen was sending me a simple, “Doing okay over there?” out of the blue.

Because he’s one of the good ones. One of those writer friends who knows when the rest of the world is beating your ass and takes the time to tell you to get over it and write already.

He wrote me back to tell me to publish that essay. To put it out there. I don’t take things Stephen says about writing lightly. I’ve never seen him compliment anything that didn’t have extreme merit, so on that note it did what Stephen always does – made me feel like writing.

My status update today on facebook was, “wishes I could figure out how to manufacture more time in a day”. And lately I’ve been downright whiney about my lack of time which has culminated in an absence of writing which sometimes feels like a lack of air. The stories are still there, the characters still knock on my eyeballs and kick around the cobwebbed corridors in my noggin… but they’re getting softer, harder to hear, farther away from lack of listening. Pretty soon they’ll find windows to break in someone else’s head… okay, maybe not, but I think it’s like a muscle. Writing isn’t all muse and fluff and magical inspiration. It’s sit in the fucking chair, get your shit together, and do the work. When you can’t find the time to do that, you have to make it.

Yes, I can manufacture time. Twenty minutes later to bed, a half an hour earlier in the morning… less facebook, more Microsoft word. I’ve done this before. Gone without sleep to write. Gone without tv or social time or whatever… And I logged back into facebook today, and saw that quote up on my page and thought, “Well, hell, you whiney bitch, what’s wrong with right now?”

So it starts with a blog post. While dinner’s on the stove… I’m not allowing myself sleep until I hit a decent word count. Time to stop lamenting the woes of my little corner of the world and get on with it… that’s the one thing about being creative by nature... you have to find the wherewithal to push yourself. No one else will do it; no one else cares if you make it. It’s up to you to manufacture your time.

Where do you find the time? Is it a routine or whenever the fancy strikes? And do you wait for the elusive muse, or hog tie her ass and make her stick around til the word count is in?

Poetry Corner: Meet Dina Darling

This is Dina Darling:


This is her latest release:



In honor of the release of her latest poetry book, Winter’s Fierce Breath, she’s allowed me to interview her here on the blog… now, I thought of all sorts of ways to introduce Ms. Darling – reams of words about how cool she is… but really, in this case, I think I’ll let her writing speak for itself. Here’s one of my favorites from her latest release:

WHY DO YOU HAVE TO

Love is shaded
Threads of lies
Loose at the seams
The ins and outs of consciousness
The toast to new beginnings failed
When the kiss of death touched my lips

I don’t want to be wrong about you
I won’t allow myself
To be so wrong
The marching band screams in my ears
Your symbol clangs a melody out of tune
On my heel
Here they come
Throwing their warnings in my face
I can listen or I can ignore them
All I know is that I’m torn

A web you’ve got me slow-dancing in
The bareness of complication
Wants a little freedom
Keep collecting your numbers
You’ve run out of vindications
Where do you find all the energy?
To take a stab at falling asleep for the night
When you’re right back up doing it again
Melted alarm clocks
Fluorescent signs
Reflect the sadness that you’re hiding
In the dark puddles below the street lights

Why can’t I cut you loose?
What am I so scared of?
WHY AM I AFRAID?
To just slam the door and walk away
You will never be good for me
You’ll always be the ache in my affection
Running away with little fragments of me
Why do you have to be so cruel?
Why do you have to have?
The wit and the appeal
That keeps me feeling alive
When I’m a little nervous to even breathe.

Me: Who are your favorite poetic influences?

Dina Darling: I love to dive into the worlds of Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Amy Lowell, Veronica Franco and Sylvia Plath.

Me: Your poetry is (beautiful, meltingly beautiful) but also very personal and often erotic... do you ever have issues censoring yourself or worry about what people will think when they read it?

Dina Darling: I have to admit I felt quite embarrassed knowing my Mom had read my first book. She was the only one I worried about as if I would shock her or something, but hey she's been there too. There are so many aspects of myself that I share in my words. Poetry is my escape. I refuse to be censored. It is what it is. I become a raging sea of explored emotions when I write. The wall comes down. I will swallow you whole. I truly am an open book with absolutely nothing to hide. Sometimes I believe that people have this goody two shoe, wholesome innocent projection of me and nothing else. That's only a mere speck of who I am. Read my books and you'll see the very heart and soul of me. I always stand by something my Grandmother used to tell me. "Half of the world will love you, half of the world will hate you." You can't please everyone.

Me: This is your second poetry book. What was your main goal in Winter's Fierce Breath, and in what ways did that goal differ from your first release?

Dina Darling: Winter's Fierce Breath is a continuation for me. It's the next chapter after The Safety of Madness. It's a constant struggle of self discovery. For me, both books are an autobiography. Every poem is truth. I write with steel backbone because I'm not afraid to put myself out there. I don't cower from the experiences I've had in the obstacle of love, whether good or bad. I am a pillar of passion longing to stop the search and find my happy ending. I am a hopeless romantic fool on display for all to see. The goals are actually similar in both books. A lesson to myself that no matter how many times love knocks the wind out of me, I have to get right back up and surrender myself completely once again. Because there is always light after dark. Love shall succeed.

Me: Do you have a favorite place to write or work on your poetry or any special routine to your writing?

Dina Darling: I find inspiration creeps up on me in the middle of the night. Once the chaos of the day breaks and my head hits the pillow, all these words start calling out to me. I always keep a pen and notebook handy on my nightstand. Though I write whenever the inspiration hits. There isn't really a routine. It could be anywhere. I just make sure I grab something to write on, newspaper, napkin, etc...depending on my location.

Me: Do you specialize only in poetry, or do you write in other genres?

Dina Darling: Funny thing is I never saw myself as a writer. It was the encouragement of my high school English teacher Ms. Clarry. She saw potential through my writing assignments. She told me to take a stab at entering the short story/poetry contest. I ended up winning second place prose. I then began to explore the world of short stories later realizing that poetry was more my forte. It is a million times more rewarding to express myself lyrically than in any other form of writing.

Dina will be sticking around to talk in comments. Feel free to ask her questions and tell her how gorgeous she is. And please consider picking up one of her poetry books, Winter’s Fierce Breath or her earlier release, The Safety of Madness.