FUN WITH PASSIVE AGGRESSION

My computer is almost two years old. I like it. I bought it with money I earned through freelance writing, which was a big thing for me – making enough money through writing to buy a big ticket item... I also bought my desk, so I basically funded my writing through my writing. I know this might seem insignificant to some people, but I have been a stay at home mom since I was twenty four... I was in fiction writing courses for the year prior to having my daughter, so my last paycheck, with my own little name on it, on any regular basis prior to my little writing money was when I was twenty three years old... that’s flippin’ eons ago... and it kind of wears on you to have so much responsibility and yet have such diminished freedom.

The keyboard I use is the one that came with the computer... I bought a separate printer and flat screen monitor, but the keyboard, I didn’t really care... just whatever’s clever, it wasn’t a big deal.

Now, I type quite a lot. Don’t we all? More so than non-writers anyway, and most of the people in my real world are non-writers. So the letters have worn off some of the oft-used keys on this keyboard... Personally I think it’s because it’s a cheap one... either that or the oil in my skin is acidic... but, if you sat down at my keyboard, you’d notice that A, S, D, E, L, N, M, C, and R are missing... K is about half gone... the arrow keys are hanging on by a thread.

I learned how to type when I was nine. I don’t look at the damn keys. Not even when I’m using the numbers... I barely glance at them ever, to be honest, so this absence of the alphabet troubles me not at all.

My husband sat down at my computer the other day and got so frustrated after two minutes he had to walk away. Couldn’t even compose a small response email. Looked at me like I was a nitwit to keep such a broken down keyboard. Even offered to get me a new one, which I declined.

My daughter asked to use my computer to work on a site they recommend at school... She’s a little more hard-headed than the husband type person, it took her five minutes to get frustrated enough to vacate the desk. The boys won’t even touch it. Mom’s computer is a broken down mess. They want the one in the family room... which means they have to share it with dad, or more accurately, dad has to wait until they’re busy with homework or in bed to check his football scores and surf for porn.

So, as I sit here running my acidic fingers across my broken down little keyboard, I can’t help but smile. How long do you think it’ll take him to figure out why I won’t buy a better keyboard? I’m thinking I can milk the ‘I’m sentimental... and I bought it myself’ thing for a while longer... though you’d think he’d know I’m not sentimental after 11 years of marriage... ah well, that’s what he gets for not paying attention.

Break on through to the other side.........

A while back, I got into a conversation on Precie’s blog about getting down to the writing. We struck a little deal that we would each finish our novels by December 31st. We struck this little bargain, back in August, but as any writer will tell you, two months is a mere blip on the radar in the novel writing process.

We also had two witnesses (and assorted blog commenters who will certainly heckle and cajole us should we slack off). The lovely Moonrat is watching from the sidelines, with her megaphone, chanting, “Down with the downward spiral!” And the wonderful Ello is nudging for to beta read at the end of our marathon runs.

Precie – status check!!! Are you still hitting the fifteen minutes a day? Progress report time... (p.s. – if you’d prefer me to pester you in private, rather than on my blog, just send me comment rasberries and I shall desist)

For me, August through September was productive, as far as the fact that I was actually writing... just not the novel I’m on now... so I’ll explain my oddities for those who are better organized with their efforts.

I decided way back while I was doing revisions for RASKIN’S WINGS that I would try to write in a more organized way. I would be the type of writer who outlines – sha-zahhh, therefore saving myself tons and tons of revision time... I would be the type of writer who writes out the pitch first and follows it through in the writing... yep, one of them.

Okay, I tried it. It doesn’t work for me. It’s great that it works for some of you, but not me. I tried. Never again. What happens when I try to outline that way is that I get bombarded by all new plots and brand new shiny ideas. I don’t know why, maybe it’s because I’m in pitch mode and since I’m not writing a pitch for a novel whose characters I’ve lived and breathed with for eons, but a brand new one I haven’t fleshed out yet... well, instead of getting into those characters, I keep going with the whole marketing pitch thing. I can’t shut it off. It’s like a water spigot with a broken handle. So I had to just stop. I’m guessing that sounds odd to some of you – too many ideas? What the hell’s the matter with you? But the fact that I kept getting a new idea, instead of getting uber excited about the one I’d just written the pitch for, told me that they weren’t the ones. Not yet, anyway.

Then I decided to work with another middle grade fantasy. I got about two chapters in (three really, but the third one sucked and I tossed it). The middle grade fantasy I will go back to, I’m sure. But I’m not there. I’m not in that mode.

Okay, so that takes you through to the end of September, when this main character bounced into my head... and he did, what I love most about writing fiction – took up every available corner of space and yapped at me even when I was trying to sleep. So I started with page one, which ran into two and three and four and before I knew it there was a brand new shiny first chapter... and then a prologue, that screamed out of my fingertips within the span of about six minutes. I love when that happens and it only happens for me when I’m open to it... when I’m not worried about the rules, when I’m not second guessing what I can and can’t do in fiction.

I talked a long time ago about embarking on a novel that was too big, that maybe was a bit ahead of what you thought you could do. That’s what I’m tackling with this one. My narrator has a voice all his own and I keep thinking, while I’m not actually writing, ‘gee, can I do that? Doesn’t some of that fly in the face of some of the rules?’ But when I’m writing, all of that stuff goes out the window... as it should. I’m having fun with it because I’m not bouncing my head off the desk over whether or not it should be more active, shorter sentence structure, blah, blah, blah... I can look at that stuff in revision.

So, the first month was a wash, albeit a creative one. From the end of September until today, I’ve gotten a prologue and the first five chapters done. I know where he’s going, who’s going with him, and how he’s going to get there... but I can’t wait to see the side roads he leads me down that I haven’t already guessed.

How about you guys? Are you plotters and planners or do you let the characters lead you through the journey? Do you pay strict attention to the rules in your rough draft, or do you leave that off for later? And how’s your writing coming?

I am SO NOT a Southern Belle

When I was a little kid, my mother dressed me as a flower for Halloween. I was only about five, but I still remember it more vividly than any other costume I’ve ever had. She took a green leotard and sewed red felt petals all around the collar. I wore green tights and dainty little ballet slippers, and the other mothers “ooohed and aaahed,” when she proudly showed off, “Her little flower.”

I hated that costume.

I was not a flower. She tried valiantly to make me one, buying me pretty dresses and making the floufy little things with her own two hands. She even wrestled me into wearing a few of them, but they never stayed pretty for long. I had two older brothers and I wanted to play ball, jump off the roof into the pool, and play with their star wars toys – and not just the Princess Lea ones, either. I was not a flower.

The slippers had no traction and the only good thing about them was that I could get them off quick as lightning and pummel my brothers with them for laughing at me... and they didn’t leave marks – ha. I can remember that Halloween because I had to stand and be admired while desperately itching to get down the block to the house that gave out the full size Snickers bars before all the good loot was gone.

When my daughter was in Kindergarten, I made her costume, too. She was the Lollipop Princess from Candyland. I made her a yellow jumper and painted lollipops all around the trim, and added the three lollipop buttons to the top. I made her a crown from Styrofoam wreaths wrapped in yellow ribbon and hot glued real lollipops on top.

My daughter has very thick wavy hair, so it took about an hour to pin it all up and I sprayed it all pink... she looked adorable for school... Oddly enough, she didn’t want to wear that costume the next night for the costume party at the Parish. She insisted on being a cowboy. At the time I was sure she didn’t want to spend all that time on the hair... it wasn’t until this year that I caught the connection...

A few weeks ago, we were looking online to get ideas for her costume. She didn’t like anything. She’s eleven and at her age the costumes are, sad to say, either trampy or stupid. Zooming along, I caught sight of a “southern belle” costume, designed like Scarlett’s dress from the barbeque... the white with green trim thing... and I clicked on it, opening up the picture to full screen and “oooohing and aaaahing”... to which my daughter replied:

“I am SO NOT a southern belle!”

She rolled her eyes and walked away and by the next day she decided she wanted to be a hobo... okay, I’m a little hard-headed and I still wasn’t getting it. I mean, fine, I get the not wanting to be girly... yeah, I’m there with ya...

So yesterday, I get a sheet from the school about all of the things that are unacceptable for Halloween. And I’m still a little worried about the hobo thing because I’m not sure how it’ll look and wouldn’t she rather have store bought than thrown together? And yes, I’m a hard-head...

Me: You know, the school has all of these rules about what’s acceptable for your costume. Are you sure we can’t just go buy you one?

Daughter: What kind of rules?

Me: You know, nothing with weapons or drugs or alcohol...

Daughter: I’m not going as a drunk. What, do they have something against poor people?


So you see my dilemma here? My eleven year old is obviously smarter than I am... I swear, she clears my perspective and teaches me something new all the time... I’m helping her find a flannel this afternoon... I wonder which jeans to fill up with patches.

Freedom of Speech and the Loss of Compassion

On a few occasions in life, I’ve been hit by overwhelming grief at the absence of compassion where ego is easy. I know, in my heart of hearts, that most people don’t mean to cause hurt or pain – they’re just not thinking past their point or motive or own needs. They forget, briefly or otherwise, the basic rules of humanity. Those who are Christian might call it the golden rule, but every culture and every person who’s ever been hurt by the words and actions of another can understand the importance of the tenet, “Put yourself in the other guy’s shoes”.

Yesterday, I heard some unsettling news. A man who was a friend of a friend (I know that sounds convoluted, but I didn’t know him personally and don’t want to name him for reasons you’ll understand shortly) – this man killed himself. He was a stock broker, so I guess you might already imagine the motives.

I happened to notice that it was also written up in the larger local papers, and clicked on the articles on one of the sites. It gave the basic facts, his name and where he lives, where it occurred and the assumed reasons he would have become so despondent. And then there was the section for comments.

Most were well meaning, but some, well some had to admonish how foolish it was to take ones’ life over money... some couldn’t put aside the judgment... and I get it, I do... But, all I kept thinking was, “Oh my God, I’ll bet his family is reading this. I bet they’re pouring through every comment and aching with every word.” And I doubt so much that the people who did comment even considered it. To them, it’s just an article in the paper. A faceless person they’ll never know. And I wonder if they would be so crass to say these things at his funeral, in the presence of his loved ones – and I wonder if they know they essentially did just that.

I am a huge advocate of freedom of speech, and I get that that also includes the things I don’t think should be said. But I think, on occasion, we need to remember that our words have impact. We have a responsibility to be compassionate. This economy is not getting better in a day or a week and there’s a very real chance that the changes coming will be long and arduous for a great many people. Nothing is insurmountable and I have a great deal of faith that whatever is coming, we can handle, that even the worst of obstacles can make way for the greatest of triumphs. But while we’re on the road, be kind. Not because there’s payment in it. Not to pad your reputation or help your own situation, but because it’s right.

Go out and do something nice today. Restore my faith in humanity, because I swear sometimes it’s lagging.

How Do You Crit?

I’ve often mentioned that blogging, for all its time-suck-ability, has been the best resource for me as far as a writing circle. Most of my beta readers, whom I adore and are the most helpful giving people ever, have started as blogging buddies. In those scenarios, I’ve gotten to know them pretty well over the course of months, and in some cases years, and developed email relationships that surpass regular blogging relationships (and some of those can be pretty tight, too).

That type of writing relationship works for me because I have a good idea, before work is exchanged, what they’re looking for in a crit and they have a good idea of what type of things I’ll point out... except maybe for Travis, because I couldn’t find a single thing to tell him might need work, and I doubt he knows how rare that is for me.

In my experience, every crit partner offers something a bit different. Some come at it in an overall type of way, giving you a feel for the characters or themes that hit and miss but not necessarily specific lines or places that lose them in the story. Some crit partners will focus on the specifics and let you worry over the larger things. And, like any relationship, you’re not going to get along with every crit partner and not all of them will have a benefit on your work – usually I think this has more to do with personal conflicts than with the actual writing.

I’ve had a few crit partners that I didn’t particularly mesh with, and I think in most scenarios it’s because either the type of writing we’re into aren’t similar enough that we’re any help to each other, or because we don’t work the same way, sensibility wise.

I had one crit partner, a while back, that made a particular impact on me... partially because I should have seen the storm brewing and walked away before I lost my temper, and partially because I still feel like my specific crit wasn’t the problem. I didn’t know this person in the real world, and they weren’t a blogging friend, so we pretty much exchanged some long emails before getting down to the critique work... After the first few exchanges, I started omitting things that I would normally have mentioned – that should have been the red flag. I didn’t want to hurt feelings, and it shouldn’t have been about that.

Like any relationship, the minute you have to omit things to be ‘kind’ is when the honesty breaks down... when the honesty breaks down the tension begins. From my end of things, over the course of many exchanges, I started to get the feeling that this writer felt that I was beneath her. When I commented on grammatical issues, the response I got basically gave me the impression that she had better educated sources to go over that, I was there to look at the overall, and more specifically, to point out mannerisms to flesh out the scumbag characters... okay, so you can see how I felt slightly insulted.

But looking back on this now, I doubt that she understands why I was so insulted. At the time, I was pretty sure it was intentional... there are still comments ringing in my ears that couldn’t have been meant as anything other than an insult, but in retrospect, some of that was after the relationship had become more than tense.

Like any failed relationship, I think it’s important to learn from it. The writer in question isn’t a bad person or a bad writer – in fact she’s a rather good writer, to be fair. The problem was, we have very different mindsets about writing and about life. Had we bumped into each other in person, or met at a writing conference or something like that, I doubt we would have clicked personally – and that’s okay. Not everyone has to like me... and here we get to the heart of what went wrong.

Honesty. Honesty is essential in critique. It is. It is sometimes painful to hear and you need to approach it with tact, but it’s a waste of time for me to read someone’s pages and not tell them the truth. Honesty means that not only will I give you my honest opinion, but I will not take offense if you find that it doesn’t work for you. Critique isn’t a mandate, it’s an opinion.

So, for me, I’ve taken a valuable lesson into all of my other writing relationships. If I start to feel that I need to sugar coat things or can’t be honest, then I can’t work with you. That doesn’t mean I’m going out of my way to be mean, I’ll phrase things as nicely as possible and I always include things that work, because I think it’s helpful... but still, life is too short to work with people that irritate you (and vice versa) especially for free. It also means knowing that their critique is valid and they will point out what they see, which is not necessarily the thing you’re concerned about... but in the long run you’re getting fresh eyes on the ms. That can see things you might miss... So, I take all crits into consideration... that doesn’t mean I use all of the advice, but I at least give it careful thought.

So how about you guys? Have you ever had a crit relationship not work out? Are there specific things you look for in a crit partner, or specific things you want from a critique? Are there specific things you hate for people to crit (for instance, do you hate it when they’re nitpicky about grammar or tense, or do you hate it when they don’t mention these things?) How do you crit?

I'm In Love................................

Moonie and Precie pointed out this awesome entry by Libba Bray way back in July. It compares writing a novel to falling in love, and it’s well worth the read if any of you missed it over the summer and need a good grin.

For me, like everything else in life, writing has an ebb and flow. We’ll leave the business end (researching agents/publishers, writing queries, submissions, query hell, etc.) to the side for this post, and just talk about the actual writing process.

In my experience with both Raskin’s Wings and The Terrible Piece of Tripe that Shall Not Be Named but was My First Attempt at a Full Novel, I would hit periods of writing where the work just flowed and I was excited even when I wasn’t actively writing. During those periods of writing, the story kept fleshing out while I was doing other things, like dishes or dinner, or (unfortunately) trying to carry out conversations in which my friends and spouse lost a lot of patience with me.

Then it would ebb. Somewhere in the writing process I would hit a chapter that snagged, or a passage that I just couldn’t seem to get down right. It sounded wrong to me, or the words were, well, I don’t know – overly done, wrong for the voice... something... and once I wrote past that ebb I’d always get back to pace and excited again about the work.

Right now, I’m in love... so much so that all of my other writing before it just doesn’t seem to matter. I wonder if other writers do this – published ones, specifically, I wonder if subsequent novels eclipse their earlier work for them or if this is just a gushy stage in the Brand New Shiny WIP saga.

Lately, I’ve been uber busy with the kids, and putting my house together, and a host of other things I hadn’t expected – and still, I can’t keep away from my manuscript for a whole day. I’ve written something, everyday, since I began... some of it, admittedly, I cut the next day, but still it’s a work that has me hooked and wishing, rather fervently, that I could just wake in the morning and start writing, and not have to put it away until I was ready for bed... If I could pass all of my other responsibilities to someone else, it would be heaven... but kids have to be fed and bathed, homework done, parent teacher meetings attended, practices and games... well, you get it...

The funny thing, usually all of that stopping and starting makes writing hard for me. Even when I’m excited about the story, the fact that I have to stop mid-page or sometimes mid-sentence pulls me out of it enough that when I sit back down I have to re-read endlessly to get back into the mind frame. Not this time, though... Am I gushing? Seriously, I’m in love.

So, I thought I’d include a bit in case you guys wanted to see what’s been taking up all of my blogging time.. This short prologue is in the MC’s voice, and I sooo dig him... Oh, brand new shiny wip’s title? FROM THE NEIGHBORHOOD:


I don’t come back to the old neighborhood very often, even though it’s just a short drive on the Eisenhower. There’s no one there, no one left who remembers me – who remembers us. I see the familiar street monikers from the expressway on my way downtown. I hear them in my head, in my old voice, the one I learned to hide long ago. It sneaks in, though, that guttural slang and dropping of consonants – when I’m angry or tired or thinking of home. And it unnerves people in my life today, to hear who I really am. They shake their heads as if they’ve imagined it and I revert to the polished grammar they’ve come to expect, and I hate them a little for the judgment but I think sometimes I hate myself more.

It’s a funny thing about that neighborhood; it never really lets you go. It’s always there, under your skin, in your veins, part of who you are – there is no eradicating it from your person, if you ever had need or want to.

Taking the turn onto Austin, it pounds in my ears, reverberating off the pavement and concrete, echoing from brick and lifting the corners of my mouth in that cocky half-smile. By the time I pass Roosevelt, I’m back. In my head I’m ten, twelve, fifteen, running through alleys or playing ball on the corner. Voices of long ago sing crisp and clear. The place I’m looking for doesn’t exist – only in memory and what little history that brick and concrete holds within, tracks of the people who owned those streets once, who called that place home and never quite left it, no matter how far they wandered.

CALLING ALL WRITERS!!!!

Many of you may know about this already, but for those stumbling by or not familiar with the wonderful world of Moonrat and her Mischief, here are the details:

Our dear friend, Moonrat, has opened a raffle to support her friend, Mischief Fights Cancer You can read the whole story at the bottom post on that site, but long story short – Moonie’s good friend has no insurance and has been diagnosed with cancer. Being an editor, Moonie can’t help her very much monetarily (as any of you familiar with the earnings in publishing can imagine) but decided to put her talent up for auction in order to help raise funds.

She put the post up yesterday and has reached almost $700.00 as of this writing – which is flippin’ fantabulous, Moonie!!! But as you all can imagine, medical procedures are extremely costly and that $700.00 isn’t likely to go very far as far as treatments are concerned...

Okay, if you’re not the charitable type, here’s what’s in it for you:

Moonrat is an editor, and a lovely person, but wait let’s stick with the ‘what’s in it for you’ thing... She’s offered up a raffle to provide full editorial feedback on the winner’s novel. There are also separate raffles for other editorial feedback, such as on queries... and, just today, an agent at Curtis Brown has signed on to raffle off her services in reviewing and critiquing YA or children’s fiction.

The stipulations for each raffle are up at the Mischief Fights Cancer Site. I hope you all will consider entering, if at all possible.

Side note to Moonie, put up a donation button for those that don’t want to enter but might want to donate.

Under Water................

Other than a bit of celebrating for our lovely friend, Ello, I’ve been largely absent from blogland the last week or so because I’ve been under water – figuratively and literally, I’m afraid – we flooded last Sunday.

First, I hope all of my bloggy friends who live in areas hardest hit are doing okay. Stacey, Ralph, and Travis, I’ve been thinking of you guys especially over the last week or so...

My case isn’t so bad, I keep telling myself how much worse it could be and how dare I even bemoan my own situation while so many people have been flooded out of homes and are dealing with devastation in their communities? But guilting myself into bucking up doesn’t seem to be working.

The actual damage here wasn’t so bad. I’ve lived in my house for eleven years and this is the first time we’ve gotten a drop of water... unfortunately, it was sewage... ewe, ewe, ewe... And, lovely as it is – I live in a bi-level... there are seven steps down to my family room/laundry room/etc... seven steps up to the bedrooms... so, the water came in through my downstairs shower and flooded into the laundry room... we got a handle on it pretty quick, but the flippin’ smell is killing me!!!!!

I have washed more laundry this week than I ever remember washing in my life.

I’ve bleached the floors, poured bleach down drains, and I think I bleached myself...

The carpet has about a one foot square in the doorway that got wet, despite my best efforts... I cannot get the flippin smell out.... I wet vacc’d, vacuumed, steam cleaned it... I steam cleaned again, sprayed Febreze – I think I have to tear it up and I can’t can’t can’t afford new carpet and that is our most used room so I can’t very well have the kids walking around on whatever the hell is underneath there....

Oh, and in the mad dash to move everything in the water’s way, and stop the rush, and put towels down to protect the carpet... I fell down the stairs – not once, but three flippin’ times! Partially because it was dripping with water... mostly because I’m a klutz... but I’m so bruised I look like a poster child for the abuse hotline and I’d really like a long hot bath... that lasts ten years or so...

Ah, better. There were already some personal issues going on that made this little added difficulty a bit harder to handle... I’m not getting into it here, but we’ll just say that my hands are too full to blog much. I’m sorry I haven’t been checking in on you all with regularity, but I hope you’ve all weathered the storms and are doing well...

For now, I’ll leave you with a poem. It’s one of my favorites, and it’s been making me feel a bit better lately:

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as a Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be,
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance,
My head is bloodied, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how straight the gate
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

- William Ernest Henley

JOIN US IN A HAPPY DANCE!!!

The very lovely Ello has just signed for representation with Bill Contardi!!!



As a loyal blog reader, and very lucky beta reader, let me tell you, her talent is deserving of every success. I'm looking forward to announcing the amazing book deals that are sure to follow!

Pop on over to Ello's and offer your congratulations.

Yay, Ello!

Yay, Ello!

Shake your booty!

Yay, Ello!

Perspective and Pixie Dust

When I was little, young enough so that I had to stand on my tippy toes to look out the front door window, I can remember spending oodles of time in my front hall. It was a cavernous entryway, with a large wooden front door and the glass window had diamond shaped panes of glass that I later learned were called cottage windows. The floor was brown and white patterned ceramic tile, with two steps that led up to the entry of the front room, and there was an oil painted replica of Dali’s Christ of St. John Over the Water hanging perfectly at eye level with the door. I would sit on the top step, in the late afternoon, as the sun shone in streams through the panes of glass, and watch the dust dancing through the beams as if they were magic. I thought they were pixie dust – they were far too pretty to be every day dust, after all... and surely my mother would hate that I reiterated this here to you, if it was just her lax with the vacuum that filled my daydreams and not something far more magical.

Today, though we moved from my childhood house twenty years ago (oy, that sounds terrible... that I can say I did anything twenty years ago just sounds odd), but I know that room to be less than cavernous, probably a bare four feet from doorway to steps, and the arching door led straight into our front room... ah, my favorite part of Chicago homes, we have front room rather than living rooms or ‘Great Rooms’ or ‘Drawing Room’... what makes them great? Do you actually draw in them? Okay, well, I could probably get into that last one... but it’s one of the things that’s so a part of me, Chicago is low on its pretention, just the way I like it.

I went on a girls’ weekend this weekend, with two of my friends from high school... I may be posting more on that later – with pictures if I get their permission first, and have been waxing a bit philosophical about perspective, and the way things change with age. I don’t think dust is nearly as pretty these days and I kind of miss that mindset, that there’s something magical in dust – at my age it’s only another of life’s irritations you try to keep at bay, but can’t quite master.

I wonder if you guys can page back and remember what it felt like to look out at the world from tippy toes, to have to hop and pull yourself up to sit on your parents’ car trunk, to see snow about your head (though it’s only four feet)... I can remember that vividly. I remember the feel of bite on my cheeks that was so cold it felt hot and made my face glow a crimson candy apple red beneath my scarf and little red snow suit. I hear the laughter, loud vivacious guffaws, from the front porch where the adults sat while we ran under streetlights in the summer.

And I think, maybe that’s the allure of writing for children. That there are these things in my head that I still feel and see and understand... more keenly and more magical than any of my adult stories... maybe I’ll dive into those later, but those early days, the newness the heartbreak that you steel yourself against later – the things that lose their bite as your skin gets thicker... those are the things pulling me now, today...

How about you? Has your perspective changed in leaps and bounds? Can you still feel and see and smell things from other passages in your timeline? And do those things motivate you to write, or are there other things, pulling your fingers along the keyboard?

Room Mom Lament

In my last post I discussed education and some of the reasons why schools work or fail. If you read that, and my fairly opinionated commentary, you already know that my feeling is that the single greatest determining factor in a child’s scholastic success rests with the parents. That’s not to say that a failing district can be overcome by the parent, but I think failing districts often have an overabundance of parents who are not accountable for their children…

Well, hell, I just re-read that and realized that I’m about to piss a lot of people off. If you have tender hearts or virgin ears, please discontinue reading. Otherwise, buckle up.

I am, once again, a room mom – this year for my middle child’s class. I already know what’s coming, having been ridiculously involved since my oldest started three year old pre-school (she’s in fifth grade this year). I didn’t volunteer for this one, in fact I purposely didn’t sign up. I have three kids in school and wanted to make sure I could make at least one party for each of them. When you’re a room parent, you have to attend the majority of the events for that class… okay, that was long and windy, but the basic thing is – no one else would accept the position, which already tells me I’m going to have a hell of a time finding volunteers. Luckily, the first and third grade have their Christmas parties on different days, so hopefully I can attend that one for youngest.

But enough about how I’m going to balance spending some time in each of my children’s classes – the point is the lack of volunteers. Here’s how this conversation can often go:

Me: Hi, my name is Merry and my child is in your child’s class. We need parents to help with their holiday parties. Do you think you can sign up for one of them?

Parent: Oh, no, I work. Sorry.

AAAAARGGGGGG!!!!! Not for nothing, but what kind of bullshit answer is that? There are a lot of parents who work and still make their children’s school life a priority and quite frankly there are relatively few employers who will hold it against you for taking one afternoon off in a ten month school year to attend your child’s party. If you are the extreme case whose boss will boil you in oil, you are excused from this rant… but for the most part, these same parents who can’t commit to an one hour party in the afternoon are also never in attendance at the evening or weekend events, so in some of those cases I’m thinking they just can’t be bothered – which sucks for their kid.

I get that working and raising children is hard to balance. I even get it if you can’t make the afternoon stuff but try to make the evening events or in some other way volunteer (there are a lot of things you can do from home, just ask the school). And forget the fact that it’s flippin’ annoying to the rest of us who, by the way, also WORK – that line just kills me, I’m sorry. I’m not sitting on the couch eating bon-bons for fuck’s sake – even if I wasn’t writing at home, I’d still have every ounce of time consumed with raising my own kids and taking up the slack at school for the parents that don’t flippin’ bother!

Okay, sorry. You can unplug your virgin ears now. Here’s the thing, for any of you reading that don’t bother with your children’s events – don’t worry about annoying people like me. Hey, who the fuck am I, really? (oops, now you can unplug them) But you should definitely take into account the kind of message you want to send your kid. Do you remember being that age? Do you remember what it felt like when your parents didn’t bother to show up? When you missed a school event because they didn’t think it was a big deal?

Their school world is their whole life. It’s where they learn how to deal with people, how to build relationships, a work ethic, respect, pride in accomplishment, independence… and their parents, for better or worse, hold the reigns to how they feel about themselves for most, if not all, of their lives.

If your parents were ones that didn’t think it mattered – do your kid a favor and show them a little better.

Okay, I’m done. Carry on.

Back To School

This month, a group of ministers in the Chicagoland area called for a boycott of the first day of school. The reason they want to hold children back from their classrooms is in protest of the way schools are funded in Illinois. Let me first say, I think it’s ridiculous to boycott in this way – the only people really inconvenienced or hurt by keeping kids out of the classroom are the kids. But, on the whole I agree with them. The funding system here is unfair. The way it works is that schools are funded by the property taxes paid in the area, so obviously affluent suburbs have a greater amount of money to work with and far fewer students to educate.

Some suburbs have as much as $17,000.00 per student, where the inner city has about $10,000.00. Yep, that’s a discrepancy and in a public school system I have to agree that the amount of money your family earns should have no bearing on the type of education available to you through that system…

But, here’s where I diverge. Catholic Schools need about $5,000.00 per student to educate their pupils. That’s half of what’s available in the city schools. Catholic School students, on the whole, out perform their public school counterparts and a far greater percentage of them finish high school and go on to college. Now, I mentioned before that I moved my own kids from the local Catholic School to the local public school last year – so I do believe children can get a good education in the public school system – but I don’t think the answer is to throw money at it.
I think if this protest works and the funding is more equally dispersed, it will have little to no effect on how well the children in those districts are educated. I think the call for more funding in education is a great rally cry for politicians, but it doesn’t do anything to solve the problems in education.

I think what we really need to do is look at the schools that succeed (regardless if they’re public or privately funded) and see where they differ from the schools that are failing and I think the biggest variance you’ll see is in the pupils’ own families. Kids who succeed in school have parents who are supportive of their education. They have parents who come to all of their school functions, volunteer to help in the classroom, or in whatever way available to them they show their child that they value the work they do in school. They treat the child’s school career with the same respect that they treat their own career.

That is the first variance I see, there are others, but we have to own the fact that a child’s first and most powerful educator is his / her family. In other words, counting on politicians to solve this problem is ludicrous. First, most politicians do not use the public school system. They send their own children to private schools that the average American cannot afford. So why would we count on them to fix a system that they have no vested personal interest in and, quite frankly, don’t take the time to understand? And even the well-meaning politician who honestly wants to champion the school system is at a disadvantage – even the best system and most dedicated teachers can do little to educate a child whose parents won’t work with them.

I think we’ve come to a point in this country where, when things are not working, we automatically want the government to fix it and I think that’s dangerous. We need to own our own communities and our own lives.

There are other reasons education is failing in areas here, and I’d love to talk about that in the comments section, but I think the number one decider of a child’s success at school will be in the support they receive early on and throughout their education. A close second is the amount of support their peers receive, because I can be as proactive in my child’s moral and academic growth as possible, but if they’re in a classroom full of kids whose parents don’t care, kids who then start misbehaving or being disruptive, well, obviously, that puts every child at a disadvantage to learn.

If I had that situation in my own kids public school, I’d move them right back to Catholic School without batting an eye… it doesn’t solve the problem in the school system, though, does it? And right now, many parents’ hands are tied in where their child attends school because private education is very expensive.

This is a far reaching topic and I think there are a lot of variables. What do you think? How do we fix it? Can it be fixed? Do you think more government input on individual school districts is the answer, or less? Do you think more funding will solve it?

What did you do all weekend?

So, hubby type person took the kiddies camping for the weekend. It sounds like they had a ball. They left Friday afternoon and are due back here in a few hours.

Yes, dear friends, I had the whole lovely weekend to myself. I couldn’t even talk to the kids on the phone because the reception was bad, so my communication with the family was relegated to hubby’s text messages via my email.

Once they got on the highway, he called to let me know where they were, what they did all weekend, etc. etc… and after a glorious recap of the friends my daughter made (my ten year old can and will make friends anywhere, she was invited to other people’s camps for dinner and even to a birthday party after having been there barely a day… of course, he couldn’t let her go off with people he just met, still she found it nice to be asked… she even garnered the whole family an invitation to spend the evening with another family at their campfire…she’s a trip, that one)

Anywhoo, after his glorious recap he asked what I did all weekend.

I wrote. I noodled my current wip a lot, I wrote, I deleted, I wrote some more… I made notes, I looked up some things, I played online and checked in at blogs… I wrote… That’s what I did pretty much all weekend.

To which he asked, okay, you wrote, but did you buy the kids school supplies?

Umn, no. Not yet. I’ll go this week, I guess.

Did you clean out their rooms? Did you organize the house? Did you stock up on groceries? Did you balance the checkbook or anything?

No… I did not. I thought about it, and then I passed. Listen, I have to do all of those things, I even thought I’d get to some of them this weekend, but no… I did some laundry… but, yanno, the machine can run while I’m still writing. I didn’t cook I didn’t clean I did nothing that would resemble work for the household, it was all about writing. I wrote. That’s what I did.

Huh… hubby replied, a bit taken back. And then he bit his tongue, which was a wiser decision than he knows. He will come home, look around the still somewhat disorganized household, and wonder why he married such a lazy woman.

Guess what… I don’t care. I wrote. It’s very rare that I get the chance to just think about the writing from sun up to sun down… I took it. I get that he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t see any progress there, he only hears me say that I wrote but since there’s no promotion or paycheck involved I might as well tell him I spent the weekend drunk or zoning out in front of the tv.

And usually I feel very guilty when I spend that kind of time on my writing and not with the kids or on other people’s stuff. But I’m not doing it today. I can get in the cleaning later. Hell, they can help me clean – they live here, too.

So how about you guys? What did you do with your weekend? And do you feel guilty spending time on your writing when it’s not the job that pays the bills? Does your spouse support you in your writing and see that time as valid?

Here Comes The Sun

A little lesson in Tarot before we begin:

A Tarot deck is comprised of the Major Arcana and Minor Arcana. The Minor Arcana is the predecessor of today’s playing cards, though each suit holds one extra face card – Page, Knight, Queen, and King.

The Major Arcana has twenty two cards, from Key Zero – The Fool, to Key Twenty One – The World. The cards come with a lush history and there are many different studies of how to read them and games that may have been in popular use through the ages. One philosophy is that the Major Arcana tells a story and that each card delineates a part of The Fool’s journey (all of us being the fools :-)

Since most of you probably aren’t that interested in the cards themselves, I’ll skip straight to the point. The Sun card, pictured above, notes exactly what it looks like. It’s happiness and fulfillment. It’s the spoils after the stuggle, and it’s contentment in all areas of your life. Now, each card can bear varied meanings, depending on their placement in a spread and what the other cards are around them, but overall this one is exactly the thing we all seek – fulfillment and contentment... it often means material success but I think that’s become a meaning because people seem to equate happiness with money, not so much because the cards do.

The card directly before The Sun card in the deck is, fittingly enough, The Moon. The Moon carries a lot of negative connotations in the tarot deck, despite the fact that many pagan and Wicca traditions stress the power of the moon and all of its phases. In The Fool’s journey, The Moon symbolizes the struggles to overcome, the rocks in your path and the hardships you must face on your journey. Again, the exact meaning will change with the layout and position, but overall, most people don’t like to see The Moon come up in their readings.... except for me.

The Moon was my favorite card, since I first started to learn about tarot in my teen years. I identified with it – looking at the obstacles in life not as something to fear, but as a focus of pride and a means to evolve and grow. I focused, not on the actual hindrance, but on the experience as a means to make me stronger... pride goeth before the fall...

Anyway, I think most people have their ‘things’, little symbols or quirks that people associate with them. One of mine, was the moon. A lot of people who know me don’t necessarily know that it comes from the tarot, or the signifying meaning, but they do associate it with me, enough so that I’ve received moonstone jewelry, boxes with moons on them, and all sorts of various knick knacks with the moon in it somewhere as gifts over the years. My first tattoo was a moon, on my stomach... I was nineteen and it was an adorable half moon... three kids later, and it’s not nearly so adorable... and not exactly half anymore either, but I’ll digress.

But lately I’ve been doing a lot of pondering about this, about my focus of energy and how much influence that has over the things in my life... I don’t consciously think of the moon daily, don’t get me wrong, but with various reminders of that connotation around me, I wonder if perhaps I can’t help but focus more on the tasks and less on the fun... I want this life to be a journey – I think that’s where the whole thing started, because The Sun to me always signified an end of the journey, a completion. And even if that completion was triumphant, it still meant the end – where else is there to go after reaching perfect happiness?

But, in this little path of self inspection, I’ve decided that my original summation of The Sun card was flawed. It is not happiness in completion, but happiness itself. It’s the decision to find joy in the journey, on the path, in the everyday. And I do think that’s a decision. So, I’m changing my card... I pick The Sun... The Moon and I will always be friends, but it’s time to shift focus... we’ll see where it goes from here.

So how about you guys? Do you have any symbols or things associated with you? And how about your own self-inspection – had any life revelations that would benefit the rest of us? I’d love to hear about it....

WOW - An Open Prompt Flash Fiction Contest!

The awesomeness that is Chris Eldin turned me on to a new contest when she posted her short story, Warning Shot (follow the link to check out her haunting entry). The contest is hosted by Women On Writing, and they have one every quarter - check out the submission guidelines here. This one is the summer contest, and it’s an open prompt, so fun for all writers – the deadline is August 31, 2008. I hope all of you will consider playing... So far, I know Precie put up a stellar entry, too.

Okay, without further ado, making it in just under the 500 word count, my entry:

Time In Purgatory

Most of the sorrows of the world were caused by envy and greed. Of this, Madeleine was certain. Just as she knew that the best of our history would be forgotten for fear. Our most significant accomplishments were often in the mistakes, and those we took care to bury much deeper than the ordinary lies we let people see.

Cocooned in the prison of hospital sheets, she ran crinkled fingers over the stiff material and attempted a sigh through the plastic tube stuffed down her throat.

"Not much of a thread count there, cheap bastards."

Madeleine stopped willing herself to die a number of days before. It just didn't work. You'd think a simple thing like telling her own damn heart to stop might be easy, but it wasn't.

She listened to the respirator beside her bed with its steady, annoying huff, and she whispered a prayer, if only in her own head. Well, how the hell else was she meant to do it? For once in her life, she couldn't use her mouth.

She finally resorted to swearing at God, hoping it might bait him into finishing her off. But that bastard always was smarter than her, and she figured he was keeping her there, stuck in purgatory for a lesson. Either that or he was cutting her a little break before eternal damnation, but she wasn't quite sure which it was.

Visitors came and went. Her children hovered and sat, clicking through the stations on the wall-mounted TV and staring at the blinking, neon numbers on the machine that let them know she wasn't dead yet.

Madeleine's oldest granddaughter, Fiona, swooped in once a day, filling the room with the stink of expensive perfume. The smell stayed for hours, settling in the back of Madeleine's throat with a vicious tickle.

"Have you cleaned out her house yet? We should go through the jewelry and bank accounts soon." Fiona said to her mother, who was sitting in the chair next to Madeleine's bed.

"Not yet. I think we should wait until after. Your father and aunts will throw a fit if we go through their mother's things while she's still alive." Elaine's eyes flicked over the emaciated woman, lying prostrate in bed.

Madeleine heard every word, but didn't stir. Her lashes fluttered open here and there but otherwise she acted as if she didn't know they were in the room. Thirty five years. For thirty five years Elaine was sunshine and light around her mother-in-law, and she made sure Fiona was, too. Not now, though. They had some nerve when the old lady couldn't respond.

"That's okay," Madeleine thought, the corners of her mouth just twitching up around the tube.

Her mind shot back to the papers in her desk drawer at home and the copy with her lawyer. Madeleine wished she could give a mighty guffaw, but settled for a slow cackle in her head as she slipped off to sleep in the sterile room.

Scary Stories and their linksies

A few weeks ago, I announced a contest for best scary story. There were a few takers, so I thought I’d share their links. Stop by and visit – you’ll definitely enjoy the writing.

PJD’s Three Wishes A beautifully written piece that will tear your heart out and make you catch your breath.

Sarah Laurenson’s Short An offbeat flash fiction piece, that will play on your senses... and offer new perspectives.

Colleen Katana’s Creepy Kid Ghost is a true story about the ghost child that plagued Colleen’s mom and ripped the heads off her children’s teddy bears.... Mrs. Katana is a mighty brave lady – I think I might have moved.

Sorry for the short post... I’ll be back around the blog-o-sphere to catch up soon.

The Dog Days of Summer

I forgot how long summer could be... okay, not really... it’s one of the few things that seems waaaaaay longer now than it did to me as a kid... but that’s only because I’m on full time mommy duty and I like to complain.

My kids however have found all sorts of interesting ways to amuse themselves. The funny thing is, I remember coming up with games when I was a kid. We made up our own all the time – ours were pretty much just pummeling the hell out of each other, though. My kids are far more inventive.

Take for instance, the new game sweeping the nation:

Dodgeball Old Lady Mock 6000

There are rules to this game.

If the ball hits you in the face, it’s a bloody nose and you’re sent to the principal’s office (apparently this means you lose a turn and sit out)

If the ball hits you in the leg, it’s a broken leg – you must hop on one foot until you’ve gotten the thrower out...

If the ball hits you in the arm, an old lady attacks you – you are forced to sit in a chair while the old lady mocks you (thus the inventive title)

Oldest does the announcer voice throughout the game... she’s rather good at it. There are sound effects and everything.

My backyard is a water war zone

We don’t have a pool. We talked about it, a few times, but so far it’s not in the cards. First of all, youngest doesn’t swim very well yet – he’s still in the beginner level at swim lessons. If he can make it up to the next level by the end of the summer, I’ve promised them that we can get a pass to the public pool next year... This, of course, is not good enough. Next summer is forever away!

So, like every mother of beasties, er, umn, I mean beautiful, well behaved children type peoples... I let them play in the sprinkler with squirt guns a few afternoons a week...

But, you know, after the first few afternoons of running around in their swimsuits through a sprinkler, it wasn’t nearly as much fun anymore... Now they’ve taken to new ways of turning a nice normal yard into six flags theme park... The super soakers all get filled up... as do water balloons.... don’t ask me what they’re doing with the tennis rackets because I’m not quite sure what that bit’s all about... oh, and they’ve turned the backyard slide into a water slide by disconnecting the hose from the sprinkler and spraying the heck out of the person at the top of the slide....

The kid down the block saw the ruckus from his own backyard and told his mom about it... I don’t think he’s allowed to come here to play anymore...

So, how about you? What have you been doing to fill up your summer months?

Halloween in July - The Man in Black

Since I’m the one with the bright idea to run a writing contest, I figured maybe I should start the ball rolling. Mine is, obviously, not entered to win the non-existent prize... so really it’s just here for your thrill seeking amusement.... If you’re thinking of entering (whine, wheedle, plead), stop over at the original post and drop me a comment to let me know you’ve posted one. Deadline’s on Wednesday, July 30th.

Head warning, this story is a lot longer than my regular posts... sorry, I’m long and windy today.

The Man in Black

The glare from the streetlights skittered across his tobacco misted windshield, as Scott veered past the quiet parked cars and careened to a stop at the usual place, three houses from my mom’s. There were two gnarled old trees between us and the front window, and even with the crisp fall wind doing its damage on the leaves, they were still a great cover for long goodnight gropings.

I watched his hands trail across the steering wheel, putting the car in park and moving over to my left knee as if in one fluid motion... he couldn’t dance worth hell, but he was graceful as anything when his mind was on things best reserved for places not near where my parents actually lived. I could feel the half smirk lifting the corner of my mouth as I looked up at him, intent on telling him to stop without really meaning it, when it caught me out of the corner of my eye.

Right there in the small window behind the driver’s side seat, the same man I’d been seeing for days stood watching. My chest tightened and I jumped full around, my jean’s pocket snagging on the warn leather upholstery as I backed up against the passenger door. There was no one there. No man. No shadow. No nothing. I’d seen him at the gas station the night before, standing just behind the pump as I got out of my car. When I turned to look at him, there was no one there. The same thing happened days before, walking to the mailbox right down the block.

I turned my attention back to Scott, trying to regain my breath and act like nothing had happened, except it was too late.

“What?!!!” he shouted, whipping his head around and then glaring back at me, a vivid panic twisting his cheeks.

That little gleam in his eye that I liked to think was from me, but just as likely had to do with the amount of drinking we’d been doing that night, well, that playful look was gone. Instead, his light brown eyes darted back and forth before settling on mine, and his hand was less a caress than a vice grip on my leg before I cracked him with my knuckles.

“Nothing,” I said, shrugging my shoulders and trying to resurrect that half smile thing that usually worked so well.

“Seriously, what? What did you see?” he turned back to look behind him again before focusing on me in earnest. “What? It wasn’t nothing, what did you see?”

I was going to try arguing with him, but his voice was a little too manic and I didn’t think he’d believe me. Then again, I really didn’t want to tell him I’d been seeing some shadow man with a fedora hat who looked like he came straight out of an old forties movie.

“Nothing... really,” I huffed a bit to accentuate my frustration but as none of my usual tricks seemed to be working, I settled on the truth... or an approximation of it, anyway.

“I thought I saw someone... it wasn’t anything, probably a leaf floating past or something,” I explained, waving my hand toward the back of the car, “See? Nothing there.”

He shook his head, with his lips all puckered up as if he’d just sucked down a fistful of lemon drops. This was going nowhere. The mood was gone anyway and I had a paper due in the next day.

Just as I was about to say goodnight, he stopped me with one, quiet question. “Was he wearing a gangster hat that covered his face?”

I didn’t have to answer, couldn’t have even if I wanted to. My face was confirmation enough. I didn’t even know my mouth was hanging open until I realized my tongue was so dry it was painful. Scott turned the key in the ignition and lit out of the parking space without even checking his side view mirror.

We wound up at a little coffee shop some blocks away from my house; Scott hadn’t said a word the entire drive there, even though I’d been peppering him with cuss words and indignant epitaphs the whole way.

“What are we doing here?” By this point I half-expected him not to answer even that simple question.

He grabbed a notebook from the back seat and headed for the restaurant door, saying, “Come on, I’ve got to show you something.”

By the time our waitress came back with our coffee, I was halfway through the second page of his story, fidgeting with the ragged edge of the loose leaf paper and trying to make his chicken scratch make sense. Scott’s story described my ghostie to a tee, and I knew I didn’t tell him about it.

“So wait,” I started, grabbing a handful of sugar packets and dumping them in my coffee, “is this fiction? What is this?”

“Yes and no...” He drummed his hand on the table and leaned forward in the booth, “I’m writing it as fiction, but the man in black is the real deal.”

“Okay...” I said, “so what, it’s like a ghost or something?”

“No.”
He sat there, with this smug look on his face, like he knew some great life truth or something, but as near as I could tell, he was just trying to freak me out... except, I’d seen the guy and there was no way for him to know what I was seeing.

“Okay, what do you mean, ‘no’?”

“I mean I don’t think it’s a ghost. I don’t think it lived before... just read the rest of the story.”

I slammed the notebook shut and leaned back in the booth with my arms crossed. The story was, first of all about his ex-girlfriend, which was annoying enough. Second, I didn’t want to sit in front of him reading thirty pages of writing when he could just tell me what the hell he was talking about.

His eyebrows shot up and then he just shook his head. “Okay, basically, he’s this thing that’s been hanging around me for two years.”

“Okay...” I started, but the waitress was coming near our table and I didn’t want a perfect stranger to know we were both crazy. After she checked our coffees and moved on, I continued, “so far I got that you guys were playing with a Ouija board and this thing came through.”

“He didn’t just come through; he threw the stupid pointer thing into my wall!”

He was yelling so loud, I leapt halfway across the table to put my hands over his mouth to shut him up. And two truck drivers sitting at the counter were giggling. Have you ever seen a truck driver giggle, it’s actually not that pretty. Seriously, two big burley guys in flannel shirts and grungy hats, chirping like little school girls in my general direction... that’s uncomfortable.

“Shuuuuush... fine, so what’s the big deal, just have your house exorcised or something.”

“It’s not attached to the house. It’s attached to people. Everyone who was there that night has seen him since then, and none of them have been able to make him go away.”

What the hell did I get into?

“Wait – I wasn’t there.” I could feel the Cheshire cat grin, ha, ha... I felt like a little kid who got to glue just before the guy who was it tagged me...

“Yeah,” he said, fidgeting with his spoon, “here’s the thing, since I’ve been writing the story about it, he’s been acting up, and I think... maybe... ‘cause I’m around you so much...”

“Oh, nice... so what, you gifted me your psychic stalker?”

“Well, not on purpose.”

He looked so nervous, checking out the windows and looking everywhere but at me, I almost felt sorry for him. And I still figured it was probably more imagination than anything. By the time he dropped me off at home, I knew that the thing had been hiding his pens (more likely he misplaced them) and futzing with his computer (but he wasn’t that techie savvy to begin with). And I still didn’t see any reason to believe that if there was something there, it wasn’t just a run of the mill ghost.

I continued to see the shadowy figure in odd places, always when I was relatively alone. When I was with another person, they were never looking when it happened. A few weeks later, it started doing a bit more than just popping into my peripheral vision and disappearing. One morning, I was sitting in my kitchen after everyone else had left for work when all of the sudden the dog started barking. She was an older dog and usually only barked at the doorbell, so I thought maybe someone was coming to the door. But then her barking got louder and quicker, and by the time I got to the doorway of the kitchen, where I had I good view of the living room, she was in a full fledged fury. My mild mannered mutt was sitting bone straight in the middle of the couch, staring up at the ceiling, barking and crying at the same time. I stood there, confused for a second, until I noticed what she was looking at. There was a large cloud, it looked almost like smoke, but it was more solid and all in one spot, right up near the ceiling by the front hall.

I grabbed my keys and ran out the back, no shoes and still wearing my pajama bottoms. I’m not proud of it, but I left my poor dog there. In my defense, she was fine when I got back home.

Things quieted down a bit after that, but I was so on edge that any little thing made me skittish. Real people weren’t nearly as frightening as the things I imagined lurking around the corners.

Scott would occasionally ask if I’d seen it again, and I always lied. I didn’t want to freak him out any more than he already was, and I really thought all of his thinking about it was feeding the problem. He was convinced that the thing was trying to stop him from writing his story... Frankly, if it was me, I’d just chuck the damn story.

I was thinking that exactly, that I should convince him to throw out the story and not write it, on the last night I had contact with the man in black. We had a long weekend and I thought I’d turn in early on Sunday night because I hadn’t been getting much sleep at all in the previous weeks. Laying in the dark in my room, I got that feeling, like someone else was there.

A normal person might turn on the lights, but I froze, pulling the covers all the way up as if that would help. If anything, it just made it harder for me to move. Then there was a sound, a scratching sound, almost metallic but not quite, and it seemed to be right in my ear. I jumped up and turned on the light, half expecting that there’d be nothing there. Except there was.

One of those mylar balloons, you know, the helium ones with the pictures on one side – this one had hearts and flowers. It was bopping up and down near the ceiling and I breathed a sigh... until I realized the window was shut. There was no draft in the room. Why was it moving?

Then it raced all the way across the ceiling and stopped at the opposite wall.

“Huh... well, that’s not that scary... really.” I said it out loud, I think to convince myself, except I might have accidentally cheesed off the man in black or ghost or whatever, because just as I stopped talking, one, thick, hardcover book came all the way off of the book shelf and dropped with a bang on my desktop. The light from my overhead fixture shown off the spine, making the title wink and dance. The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul... nice choice.

Fine, that was scary... I wasn’t brave enough to say it out loud, though. I cracked my door open a bit, shut the light, and got back in bed, because there was no way I was going to sleep on the couch... again.

My eyes were closed for barely a minute, when I heard a low rumble coming from my closet. I looked in the direction of the closet door, which was open, and couldn’t see anything, but it sounded like something was knocking everything around, as if someone was having a fit in the closet. I could hear the hangers screeching against each other and things thumping around. I turned on the lights and, silence. Nothing looked moved at all, and the noise stopped. I shut the lights and it started right up, louder and more ferocious. This time when I turned on the lights, it didn’t stop. The noise grew louder and more intense, but nothing was moving.

I shut the light off and did the only thing I could think of. My grandmother once told me that to get rid of a curse, you have to surround yourself with a white light, pray to God, and ask that it be ‘sent back from whence it came’. I made the sign of the cross, imagining bright light like a halo all around, and said the Our Father, all the while, thinking, ‘Send it back from whence it came’. I said the Our Father a second time. By the third time, my mind was screaming, pleading, whining, “Send it back from whence it came, send it back from whence it came!” The minute I said, “Amen” the noise stopped. I added a Glory Be and Oh My Jesus and ended with a sign of the cross. Then I turned the light back on.

The room was completely quiet and that feeling, like there was someone there, was gone completely. The glow of numbers on my digital alarm registered 1:02 am. I walked over and closed my closet door and for the first time, took a good look at the poster I had hanging there. It was from the Art Institute of Chicago, a neon outline of the character from Dick Tracey – a shadowy man wearing a fedora. I tore it off the wall and threw it in the garbage. And when I fell into bed, it was the deepest most dreamless sleep I can ever remember.

The next day bloomed bright and sunny for October, and I was in the most fabulous mood. It was like walking out of smog into the most perfect summer day. Scott called during his break at work, like he usually did, and we made plans for later that night, but he sounded funny.

“What’s wrong with you, you sound miserable?” I asked.

“Nothing, I didn’t really sleep good last night... something started banging around in my closet at like one in the morning.”

CONTESTS ABOUND!!!

The gracious Editorial Anonymous is hosting a best-worst pitch contest . So all of my fellow middle grade and children’s writer friends should head on over there and take advantage of her hospitality!

On my previous post, I announced a scary story contest, but in light of EA’s contest and the Book Club’s week of debauchery, I’m going to extend the deadline to next week, Wednesday, July 30th... that should give everyone enough time. If you’re playing, drop a comment or link over there when it’s up!

Thank you. We now return to our regularly scheduled blogging.

WRITING CONTEST - Halloween in July

I thought it might be a good time for a writing contest... why not? Middle of summer when most of us have the least amount of time....

The lovely Ello (by the way, the new blog and picture are stunning – lucky Da Man) inspired this little writing contest, with her latest blog on Scaredy Cats

The rules are simple and anyone can play.

1. Write a short story, essay, anecdote, or personal memoir on a horror inducing subject matter. It can be anything from slasher to ghost story, paranormal or otherwise. Anything goes.

2. Form – It’s up to you. You can use traditional fiction, poetry, screenplay... I’m interested in any type of writing you’d like to include – the more variety the better.

3. Post your entry on your own blog, with a link back here and announcement on the contest – I’d love as much participation as you guys can generate... after all, we’ll all get to read a lot of different work and, best of all, get some new material for our own summer campfires.

4. Deadline: All entries must be posted by Friday, July 25th at 11:59 pm, Central Time

5. Once you’ve posted, make sure to drop back here and leave me a comment to let me know it’s up and included.


On Saturday, I’ll post a follow up blog with links to all of the entries so everyone will know where to find them. Judging will be done by you, the readers. On the follow up post, commenters can vote for their favorites. The prize is simple bloggy glory. I’ll post (with your permission) the winner’s full entry here, with links back to your blog. (I know, how cheap am I?) Or, if you prefer, an open critique, but that’s up to the winner.

So what do you say? Who’s game?

Hypothetical Dream Killing

The lovely Nathan Bransford recently posted an interesting hypothetical question... more interesting was the response by the writers who participated in the mammoth comment section... he asked:

Question #1: Let's say there was a seer who could tell you definitively whether or not you have the talent to be a published writer. Absolute 100% accuracy. But. If the seer person said no, that's that. Final answer. Would you want to know?

Question #2: If the seer person said no, you don't have the talent to be a published writer, would you still write?

First, the responses:

I think, if any of you actually missed the post, it’s worth your time to go look at the writers’ responses in Nathan’s comments section. Not that I’m negating or arguing with any of them, I just got stuck on the fact that so many people could not stick to the hypothetical premise. I think it’s because that premise came very close to some of our deepest fears. What if I really am not talented enough for this? What if I’ve been spinning my wheels for years, years of my life that I can’t get back and I’ll never be any good? What if I’m a failure?

Second, my response:

Well, what if? I thought the same thing, you know... think it every time I re-read something of mine that I thought was damn well-written, and see all of the flaws on second or third or fiftieth inspection... what if? Well, let’s take it a step further and answer his question in the spirit it was intended... the hypothetical spirit, the one that can’t argue the seer’s accuracy or fudge the outcome in any manner.

Question 1: Yes, I would want to know... for the same reason I found all of my Christmas gifts before Santa came... the same reason I found out the sex of my children... we were doing the ultrasound anyway, why the hell should my doctor know and leave me in the dark? So, yes, 100% accuracy beats the hell out of ultrasound (otherwise my daughter would be named after my father)... so yes, I’d want to know...

Question 2: Would I still want to write? Brass tax honest answer – No. Should I give you a minute to gasp and wring your hands before I continue? Okay, at least I’m honest, and I don’t think everyone is... but I do feel the need to elaborate here, just for the sake of it.

I’d love to write some poetic ode to writing, that it’s in the journey not the publication, that it’s in my blood and I can’t for all that is holy, live without it... all true, but I’ll digress... would I, knowing I will never ever make a living from writing novels, continue to spend every possible moment of my time, carrying my notebooks to get in a few sentences during the kids’ swim lessons, staking out the computer during their library time to hunt up research on agents, publishing, writing queries, how to negotiate contracts, and all of that gobblidy gook that’s a necessity for a professional writer but not nearly as fun as actually writing? Would I continue to flow through the rough draft, revel in the revision, and sweat through large portions of the edits for two or three hundred pages? No, I think you’d have to be a masochist to follow all of the steps knowing it will never sit anywhere but on my own damn desktop.

I’m sorry. No. Now, what would I do?

I would likely mourn for a very long time. I’ve actually done this once before, so I know there is an active mourning period in retiring a dream. I’ve mentioned in blog before that I originally wanted to be an artist and studied drawing and painting up to college... I was in my senior year of high school when I realized I didn’t have that talent... no seer, I realized it myself. It was a quick, lightening flash moment, when I realized that that spark, the one you see in great, beautiful, moving artwork, I can’t do that. I’m proficient with shapes and lines, my technique is passable – I cannot make it breathe... I don’t feel anything when I look at my own drawings... I can see the flaws and well drawn lines, it will never breathe.... some people can do it – if you can’t, no amount of training will give you that particular gift. I do still draw and paint... I even do portraits for other people occasionally, but I’ll never pursue it professionally.

If I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’d never reach publication with my writing, I would likely continue to write in journals, and send long windy letters and emails... I would probably blog, I’d definitely do something literary, because I can’t not... but I would get to cut out all of the angst that goes with the business end of trying to sell my creation... would I write a full length book in that state? Maybe, but it would be completely up to my own whim and enjoyment, and that push is less aggressive than the one that’s striving for a goal.

Then I’d find a new dream. Life is more fun when you have a vision, a goal... and I am a person who needs goals... I need to be working toward something... I’d venture to guess I’d want to work somewhere in publishing or maybe teaching. I can’t envision a dream of mine not having to do with literature or art of some kind... that doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy writing, but you have to strive professionally as well as spiritually... when they match up it’s wonderful... but if they don’t, you still have to keep going.

Okay, guys... how about you? Do you have an answer to this one?

The Waterboys and Perspective

Hopefully you can all access the video up there... this one worked out great because I wasn’t sure how many people had ever heard this song – and the lyrics run through the video, which is important to illustrating the story... so go ahead and play the video... I’ll wait....


Still waiting....

Yep, I’m still waiting...

Couldn’t access it? Really? Well, that’s not flippin helpful is it?

Wait...

Okay, here... you can read the lyrics on this page and if you really have a hankering for 80’s British rock, just google Whole of the Moon and you’ll come up with a slew of YouTube video’s....

Okay.... ready now?

Eons and eons ago, when I was young and feisty and full of shit, someone played me this song and said that it reminded them of me... which, of course, was flattering as all hell. They really thought that I had some cosmic understanding... that I saw all of the answers before me and moved with some sure footedness that they lacked. The truth was, I made it up as I went along... I still do.

And these types of things have happened to me throughout my life and relationships. I’ve noticed that a lot of times, people project characteristics onto me that I don’t actually possess – both good and bad. A lot of the time, they’re projecting their own thinking... I’ve had women think I would steal their boyfriends or husbands, not because I wanted to or would, but because it’s something they’ve done themselves... In turn, though, some of the nicest people in the world give me a little more credit than I probably deserve, because they see their own good nature.

I think, for most of us, the person we know ourselves to be, the one we see in the mirror and face at night when nothing else moves or breathes or takes our attention, that person is not the same one anyone else sees. Not because we’re actively trying to hide our inner workings, just because there are other variables at play. When someone asks you how you are, you say ‘fine’... or, you give them a laundry list of complains in which case they will eventually start to actively avoid you... but, the deeper pondering for me, right this second, is not so much all the muck and garbage that no one else sees because we don’t want to bother them with it, but all of the traits they see that we don’t realize or think are there.

Is the me I am in my head more valid than the one other people see? Whose perspective counts more? Or are they equal? And let’s bring this around to the subject of writing, because that’s where it’s really coming from for me – how do you show this sort of duality in your characters? Do you show it? Have you thought about it before? Are your characters the same to the outside world as they are in the sanctity of their own thoughts? Do they project themselves differently? And is it on purpose or is it the perspective of other characters that comes into play?

And now I wonder if I’m explaining this accurately at all. Perhaps it’s just a tangent I’m on with regard to the writing I’ve been doing lately... the story I’m working on is boiling down to a dynamic that isn’t at all what it appears, and each person interwoven in this particular family has a different take on the others, that’s valid but not identical to what the separate characters see themselves... I think I may be floating in the literary ocean on this one, I’m afraid I might be in the middle of it with nothing but a little plastic ducky raft... but the bill squeaks and I haven’t seen any sharks yet... I sent the first page to a reader friend of mine, who liked the voice, and I do too, she’s a spitfire... but the whole of it, what’s fleshing out is so vast and uncontainable. Every character demands their own understanding, both the inner world and way they see themselves and the outer world – the way they’re seen... and here’s the kicker, the way a character is seen by one of the other characters is not the way they’re seen by every character...

Have you ever taken on a story that you just don’t know if you have the chops to handle? The real scary thing is, I have, as I mentioned in an earlier post, multiple other pitches fleshed out that I could be working on... but this is the only thing I feel compelled to write.

Perhaps I should go and listen to some nice fifties music... clean and easy, without the esoteric gibberish... How about you guys? How do you work with these complex characters? And have you ever started a project thinking you might not be writer enough to manage the scope it demands?

My Post at Moonrat's

Our dearest, Moonrat, has included me in her ongoing blog book reviews!!!! My review of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn went up today, and I’m so honored to have been invited to participate!

If you’ve been living under a rock or something and missed them, go over to Moonie’s and dip back into the entries for the last few weeks. There’ve been reviews by wonderful agents and editors, and some fantabulous blogging writers, too!

Announcing Book Roast

A Brand New Site is sweeping into the Blog-o-sphere, and it's a must stop for the lover of booksies. Book Roast is a brand new blog covering new books and their authors... there are prizes, fun discussions, and the chance to not only find fantastic new reading fare, but to meet the authors... fun all around.

I'm adding this to my blogroll under, "Authors to Watch" and hope to see you all there... The first Author / book to be roasted is coming up on June 23rd!

What Book Am I?

First, everyone go over to Precie’s and send her good health and wellness vibes. She’s been out of the blogosphere lately, nursing some health problems and we want her better with a quickness...

She posted just today to tell us what book she was and I decided to take the quiz myself:

You're One Hundred Years of Solitude!

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Lonely and struggling, you've been around for a very long time.
Conflict has filled most of your life and torn apart nearly everyone you know. Yet there
is something majestic and even epic about your presence in the world. You love life all
the more for having seen its decimation. After all, it takes a village.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Ironic, ‘it takes a village’ is one of my least favorite phrases, I think it’s complete bullshit and it negates personal responsibility... but that could be a long and winding discussion... Anyhoo, what else was I going to post but the results of a silly internet survey thingie... now off to read my horoscope and finish up The Secret... which, by the way, is a revamping of both traditional prayer and old Wiccan / Strehgeria beliefs, but I’ll digress...

Mark Twain - Which author has most impacted you?

This post came to mind after reading through some of Moonie’s latest offerings. She’s doing a series of guest posts, having avid readers of her blog give book reviews on the novels that have made the most impact on them... That got me to thinking about books that have touched me as a writer, which spiraled into another thought, which author has had the most impact on me as writer? If I was to go with which novel, it would be a thoroughly different answer, and the answer might change depending on my mood or point of view at the time because, honestly, I’ve read a lot of amazing literature that’s impacted me in some form or fashion.

But which author? Hands down, it’s Mark Twain. I did read Tom Sawyer when I was in middle school somewhere, maybe sixth grade or so, but I didn’t think much about it until far later in life and I’ve had a love affair with Twain’s voice for most of my literate life. I can remember reading the following passage as a kid:

“...Within two minutes, or even less, he had forgotten all his troubles. Not because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter to him than a man’s are to a man, but because a new and powerful interest bore them down and drove them out of his mind for the time – just as men’s misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises. This new interest was a valued novelty in whistling, which he had just acquired from a negro, and he was suffering to practice it undisturbed. It consisted in a peculiar bird-like turn, a sort of liquid warble, produced by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth at short intervals in the midst of the music – the reader probably remembers how to do it, if he has ever been a boy. Diligence and attention soon gave him the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full of harmony and his soul full of gratitude...”

When I was in my early twenties, I was waiting for a few of my friends to get ready to go out carousing and I found a battered old copy of Tom Sawyer on the coffee table. I was never one to sit in the mirror fretting about makeup and hair, so while they were occupied in the bathroom, I sat on the couch and paged open the book... I realized I was audibly whistling when one of my friends peered around the corner and asked what the hell I was doing. Ten or twenty two, I couldn’t help but whistle when reading that passage.

This wasn’t even my favorite of Twain’s work and my reasons for loving him as a writer are long and winding. Huckleberry Finn offered some of the most amazing characters, yes, but it also offered a commentary on racial relations that was quite radical for the time, and still loudly applauded... here’s the thing, Twain had deep and powerful motives behind his storytelling, he had paramount messages to get across, but he didn’t sacrifice the entertainment of the story to do so. The most memorable scene to me is on the river raft, when the very young Huck decides he’d rather go to hell than turn Jim in. It’s more powerful than it looks, because he really believes it.

Twain went to great pains to capture his characters and is probably most often associated with his dialect – which is tremendous. It’s funny that he would be the author I love so much, because I’m trying very hard to be a more organized writer that plots thoroughly rather than writing by the seat of my pants... Twain was anything but organized. He often had multiple stories in progress at a time and when one called to him louder, he’d move on with that one and abandon all of the others. He never plotted. He set characters down on the page and let them run around until they told the story. I think the thing that speaks most to me in Twain is his lack of pretension. His characters didn’t need to be royalty or elite, as so many of the day were. He reveled in getting into the mindsets of a society that was often overlooked...

This could probably ramble on a lot longer, as I loved the man as well as his work... I’d planned on including some of his quotes, but then we’d be here all day. How about you, as a writer or a reader, which author’s made the most impact on you? Would it be the same answer if I asked which novel has made the biggest impact?

Fiction Writing ADD

I think I’m drowning... you know, without the water... the kids are officially on summer vacation and I appear to be the only mom on the playground not outlandishly thrilled at the prospect of having them home twenty four seven... ah, yes, bad mommy. To correspond with this momentous time of year where my time will be totally occupied in my full time job – being a stay at home mother – my creative demons have started to rally. Oh, yes, they is busy.

What is it with me exactly? Why is it, when I space out my time so that I can get some work done uninterrupted I’m at some sort of an impasse in my writing – either I’m at the point in revision where I really REALLY need to not work on it, to get some distance, yada yada... or I’m really not set on what I’m writing and therefore my writing time is less productive than say when I’m in the heat of creation.

Well, I thought (that was probably mistake number one, trying to think out my life... I don’t do well with that – it’s why I’m a seat of the pants writer... plotting never works out for me and the best adventures happen when I’m not at all looking for one)... Anyhoo, I thought I worked this out rather well. Revisions are done. Agent research is done. Pitches written. Synopsis complete. So basically, the plotty planny thingy, was to be geared up to fire off queries and sample pages so that I could concentrate on the kids and leisurely (hello, self? I said leisurely didn’t I?) start on the next project, without pressure.

So, what happened? I am suddenly inundated with plot ideas. I have writer’s ADD, hey look, a bunny! Seriously, I had a backburner plot all picked out... middle grade historical. I started some rudimentary research, and it’s a good idea and I like the main character... but, here’s where I think I went wrong. In order to write it, I really feel like I have to be immersed in the time frame... So I have a lot of reading and research ahead of me before I’m comfortable writing it... so my creative demons (most people call them muses but mine aren’t behaving lately, so there you go) well my creative demons didn’t want to wait... they’ve been steadily handing me fully formed plot ideas for various genres for the last month and a half.

Okay, let’s count them up, with the historical I already had planned, I have a notebook full of notes for two different middle grade novels, two different YA or tweens (I think one of them is actually tween but it could go either way), one mainstream adult fiction, one women’s fiction, and one – of all flippin’ things – mystery / suspense.

Seriously? Seriously. Here’s what I think happened; I planned myself a break from writing and something in my little creative section of brain power said, ‘oh, no, we don’t want a break... let’s keep throwing ideas at her until something’s way too good to pass up.’

So, have you ever done this? Have you ever had so many different creative irons in the fire that you confused yourself on where to go next? How do you pick? Objectively, I think I need to pick one serious idea and work on it solely. What I may do, though, is pick one of the contemporary plots so that I can start the writing process sooner, and do the research reading on the historical in my spare time so that I’m more ready for it when I finish the next wip...

So, my first step right now is to write up a pitch for each... then go through them and see which ones I’d rather read. Okay, what are you guys working on? Anyone working out more than one idea? And what are you doing with your kids over summer break?

Lolita Effect at Ello's - Bloggy Announcement!!!!

My beautiful bloggy friend, Ello is hosting a blog event that’s a must participate post for any and all parents of daughters... actually, it should be of interest to any parent (as boys will likely be effected by this at some point) and I think really this is just a human issue, everyone’s created the problem, so everyone should take a good look at it.

On Wednesday, May 28, 2008, Ello will be posting a review of the book The Lolita Effect by M. Gigi Durham, PH.D seen below:




Not only a review though, dear friends, Dr. Durham will be there to answer questions and discuss issues that concern us. I haven’t read the book yet, though I think after this it will be on the top of my TBR list – you don’t have to have read it yet to participate...

For me, this has been an issue since my daughter was in 2nd grade, and it’s getting worse as she gets older. My daughter is tall for her age, always has been. So by the age of eight, she was in size ten clothes because that’s how tall she was... well, those of you without daughters this age may not be aware, but size ten seems to be where clothing manufacturers decide to hoochiefy the selection.

All of the sudden, I couldn’t find a pair of pants that actually covered her little baby bum. Seriously, why does a kid who doesn’t have hips yet, need hip hugger jeans. That’s not all my friends, no that’s not all. I actually had to start buying little diva low riser underwear. I hate this, I really do. But when I buy her the cute flowery bloomers a kid that age should be wearing, you can see three inches of them above her pants anytime she bends over. I’ve combated this in a myriad of ways, the latest of which is buying those babydoll tops that come down past her butt – it still doesn’t solve the jeans problem, but at least she doesn’t look like a mini exhibitionist.

When my daughter made her Communion, we went together to buy her new shoes and a dress and the veil... this is special mother daughter time and I really thought, being that the selection should be primary to kids who are only eight, that the whole avoid the risqué clothes thing wouldn’t be an issue... it still was. Little one also has big feet for a kid her age. I pictured cute, white little mary jane shoes with lacy bobby socks... umn, they actually had white stilletto’s with CLEAR heels in the same section... and yes, in her size, a 3 at the time... Come on!!! Seriously, are there parents out there buying these... are there daughters strippers in training? What’s the deal?

The upshot is, my daughter doesn’t, in fourth grade, dress like the cool kids. I’ll bring her to the shops she likes for special occasions, but I refuse to spend fifty dollars on a pair of boots she’ll grow out of in six months, which are not right for the elements anyway. I refuse to get her any article of clothing that doesn’t cover her midsection, except for a bathing suit... I’m not such a prude that I mind my daughter wearing a two piece so long as it’s age appropriate (and there are some)

She doesn’t complain about it too much, but she does see the difference. I only wish it could’ve waited, the whole, ‘I need the cool clothes to fit in’ thing, until she was at least a bit older than 8.

There are other issues besides clothing that will be discussed at Ello’s. Self esteem and the way a girl starts to see herself at a young age will be paramount, I’m sure. I hope you’ll all be there to check it out and add your thoughts.