Go Sit in the Corner

Go sit in the corner of any library.  A bookstore will do but for me there are too many distractions in a store.  (Ignore that really cute guy over there in the Self-Improvement Section.  Besides, if he requires self-improvement, you don’t need him.  And there are no coffee shops loaded with chocolate and caffeine in libraries.)  Relax and sit.  (Turn off the Inner Critic and the rock music.)  Sitting and thinking is something we have trouble accomplishing now-a-days.  Don’t read and no people watching.  Just sit there and study all the bookshelves full of books.  Take in the overall picture.  Now focus in on just one section.  Doesn’t matter what section it is; just spotlight that area in your mind.  See it?  Okay, check out just one bookshelf.  Is it sagging or leaning against its neighbors from tiredness of holding up the weight of all those tomes?  Now focus in on the shelf second from the bottom.  Is it full or are there spaces where someone had to bend over to study the titles and remove a book?  Are they all the same height or resemble a snaggletooth Halloween pumpkin grinning back at you?  Are they that dusty brown of old books or a rainbow of photo-shopped covers?  Pick one book.  Doesn’t matter which one, you’re not going to read it or even touch it.  Just pick one and study it.  Imagine how it will feel.  Old books have texture on the outside where new ones are smooth.  How much weight will it have against your hand?  Can you hold it in one palm while drinking coffee with the other or is it so large you have to cradle it in both hands?  Crack it open.  Does it smell of old paper or that inky smell some books have?  (I love finding things previous readers have stuck between the pages.  I recently found an Amtrak stub.  At least someone is getting out, just not me.)  Examine one page.  Is the paper so thick you can’t tell if you’re turning one page or two or is so tissue thin, you’re afraid to touch it?  Look at the paragraphs filling up the page from top to bottom, margin to margin.  Is the print so large you wonder if there weren’t enough words to fill up the whole book or is the font so tiny you need extra strength reading glasses?  Sentences composed of work after word.  Don’t read but look at the pattern across the surface.  Straight lines, curves and dots all swimming on a sea of white.  One letter snuggling up to the next, letters building to make one word, words strung together to compose one sentence, sentences stretching into paragraphs.  Now back out and look at the page, the book, the shelf of books, the bookshelf full of books, the entire section of nothing but book laden bookshelves (that guy’s mustache … no, stop that, no distractions) and the entire library filled with nothing but books.  (And yes, the DVD’s, audio books and ebooks count because they’re made up of words too.)  Now think about this.  No matter what method was used from quill, pencil, pen, typewriter, word processor or computer, every one of those books started with an idea and a blank white page where someone wrote just one very first word.  Enough first words written on that bare white sea to fill up this library and all the libraries across the world.  So why are you sitting in the corner of the library (looking like a geek with no book, staring off into space and the mustache left) instead of going home and facing that empty page.  Remember, it only takes just one first word to get started.                    

Interpretation

How come characters in books and movies are never sitting around playing computer games while the stereo blares in the background, the television sans sound is showing a repeat of a repeat and they’re stuffing themselves with beer and popcorn?  I mean how boring is that?  Oh wait, that’s me.  

Even the SSLF’s (Smart Single Ladies of Fiction) have more exciting chapters than that.  Their scenes go something like this:  “While I ran the dishwasher, started a load of laundry, put the roast in the oven (just in case the lead male character shows up), had Mozart mumbling in the background, sipped on a glass of Merlot dressed in designer jeans and silk T-shirt, my bare toes pressed into the fur of my Afghan Wolfhound lying on the clean floor at my feet, I sat at the kitchen island and discovered the missing papers hidden in the ancient family bible I had stolen by breaking into my neighbor’s house proving he is the serial killer and … what’s that noise, someone tampering with the lock on the fifth floor balcony door and why isn’t the security system going off?”  

Let’s interpret that into reality … okay, my reality.  The dishwasher is me and a sink of hot water.  The laundry is in the trunk of my car waiting for me to actually stop at the coin laundry with both coins and detergent (which will freeze in the winter) at the same time.  You can’t use my oven, it’s full of pots and pans that don’t fit into the kitchen cabinets and the roast is a chicken boiling on top of the stove.  Rock is the music of choice and the volume level is on high (any more appliances and the circuit breaker will blow), the Merlot sports a screw cap, my jeans are torn which I guess could make them fashionable but not fit for public appearance dependent of where the rips are and my tee-shirt is spotted from where I forgot the chicken was on the stove and it boiled over.  My toes are bare but the floor is far from clean and I’m almost sure the mutt had developed fleas.  The kitchen island is a secondhand table where all four legs reach to different heights so the wine isn’t level in the juice glass but it is rapidly sinking.  And the only thing I ever found in a book was a really nice bookmark in a library book the library probably thought I had stolen (the book, not the bookmark which I did steal) because I kept it for so long.  I don’t’ know my neighbors, serial or otherwise, me and the mutt are the only security on site and the only person whoever broke in was my drunk daughter in the middle of the night without her shoes, cell phone or bra but managed to remembered the key to my backdoor and where said door was located among all the others that look just like it on the public parking lot.  She wasn’t that good at the keyhole and the only thing going off is me at the computer.

So the moral of the story is, it’s not how you live your life, it’s how you interpret it and with a good imagination you can turn dust into gold, turn cds into symphonies, turn water into … wait, someone already did that one … and turn the mutt into a single man with a steady job who doesn’t lie and can cook.  I really do have a wild imagination.  And this piece can count as the blog for this week so I can get back to the important stuff like ignoring reality and playing computer games.  

Imagination

“Good afternoon and welcome to Imagination Class, Session One of Series One.  Today, we are going to be discussing …”

            “Why are we meeting at lunchtime?” asks the nerdy girl sitting in the front row wearing thick glasses, slid down to the end of her nose.  She’s wearing jeans, t-shirt and flip-flops to be cool but it’s failing miserably.  The nerdiness is seeping from her oily pores.   

            “Because I am not a morning person.  One of the ways we humans survive is …”

            “Then why not wait and hold class at night,” suggests a very pregnant housewife sitting in the back of the classroom so she can rest her swollen ankles on the empty chair in front of her and her notebook (notebook as in paper and metal spiral) is balanced on her swollen stomach, nature’s build-in desk.

            “Because I write at night.  Our brain holds the key to …”

            “Which is why you’re not a morning person if you’re up all night writing which is evident by those bags under your eyes,” comes from the skinny all-in-black Goth girl from where she sits off to my left, wearing more eye makeup on her face than I have in my bathroom cabinet.

            “That’s two ‘which is’ in the same sentence,” I tell her just to get even.  “In this series of classes, we hope to discover …”  

            “Right, shut up.  I’m here to learn something,” orders the fat middle-aged woman from dead center of the room.  She’s wearing flat sensible shoes with the ‘I am an author’ business suit, reading glasses on beaded chain around her neck and butch shorter-than-men’s haircut highlighting the long dangly earrings that do not go with the outfit.  She has a new touch pad computer in front of her and I worry about being recorded.

            “If I may continue …”

            “Everyone knows you can’t teach imagination.  You either have it or you don’t.  Like talent.”  Nerdy Girl doesn’t even have a notebook on her desk.

              “Some people believe that but even having imagination and talent alone do not make a sellable story.”

            “What’s the fishbowls for?”  Goth Girl is renewing her black fingernail polish whose fumes are turning the pregnant lady green. 

I’d pass the trash can back but there are only four of them spread out across the classroom, as if they were afraid to sit to close to one another.  “If all of you would shut up long enough for me to … sorry.  The fishbowls will come into play in a minute.  Now …” I hesitate to try to remember how far I had gotten only to realize I haven’t even started.  “… If you use your imagination, anything and I mean anything can be built into a storyline.”

“Prove it,” Goth Girl challenges.

“Okay.  Why don’t you and this … young lady from the front row come forward.  Each of you take one folded piece of paper from separate fishbowls and hand them to me.”  I watch as they actually listen to me and follow directions all though I have to pull Goth Girl’s paper off her wet fingernail.  They return to their seats and I turn to the blackboard.

I unfold the first scrap of paper.  “Goldfish.”  And I write ‘goldfish’ on the board.  Unfurling the second and getting polish on my fingers, I find the words ‘ping pong ball’.  I add that on the board under ‘goldfish’.

“You spelled ‘ping pong’ wrong,” Nerdy Girl says.

“How can you tell?” asks Middle-Ager wanna-be author.  “You have the most atrocious handwriting I have ever seen,” she says to me.

“You should put a hyphen between them,” suggests Pregnant Lady.

“You should have put a hymen between you and the balls then you wouldn’t be in the shape you are in,” Goth Girl tells her.  “And why all of a sudden after two pages into this chapter is she a lady?” she asks me.

“If you put a hyphen between ‘ping’ and ‘pong’ you have to capitalize it because it becomes a game and copyrighted like Monopoly©.”  Middle-Ager has put her reading glasses on so she can glare at us through them.  The chain gets caught in her earrings and I fear for her lobe.

 “You seem to have capitalized on holding a monopoly on the conversation in this room,” Goth Girl tells her, “and if you think this is a game, I would suggest you …”

“Shut up,” I yell out over their squabbling.  Silence descends.  I take a deep calming breath.  “Okay.  I am going to show you how, using your imagination and whatever talent you may have, to make a story using … the two words written on the board.”

“There are four words written …” Nerdy Girl stops talking when I kick her … desk leg.

“Now in your minds picture goldfish and ping pong balls and see where the two might exist together.  Okay, I have one and am going to tell you the story I see in my mind.”  I’m either on a roll here or at least they have all shut up.

*

            The carny sat balanced on a tattered old lawn chair hoping his razor sharp hips and skinny ass didn’t break through the two remaining nylon strips.  He had been stationed at the Goldfish Toss Booth this evening, not his normal post of Knock Down the Doll.  He didn’t know the reason for the switch up but would make do with what he had.  He had even remembered to scoop out the non-swimmers, feed the tiny goldfish circling in their minuscule wet prison urns and stack boxes of ping pong balls under his chair within easy reach.  He knew the way the game worked.  It would mostly be excited toddlers and frazzled moms because this was the one game the little ones could manage and win at every time.  The moms would be the one who would have to deal with the deaths and funerals at flushing sea after they got home when the goldfish floated to the top.

            But if he got a bunch of rowdy teenagers acting up (what his mom used to say about him more years ago than he cared to remember) and scaring the little kids, he had a special box of ping pong balls he brought with him in one pocket of his money-collecting apron.  The balls were just a wee bit bigger than normal and would not fit down into the opening of the fishbowls.  No one would ever win using the special balls.

            It normally didn’t happen.  Toddlers were in bed before the teenage gangs descended on the carnival.  But as he watched, a male-type-teen dressed in sneakers, black t-shirt, huge gold peace symbol hanging from a chain around his neck, and black pants whose hem stirred the dust and whose waistband hung down low enough to show off his chessboard black and white boxers approached the booth, dragging miniature male by the hand.  The little boy’s other hand was busy cramming his thumb down his own throat.

            “Little dude wants a fish,” the teenager said.

            “Three balls for a dollar.”  The carny held out his hand but didn’t rise from his seat.

            The older boy managed to dig a dollar bill out of his jeans without lowering them any further.  “I looked for you over by the dolls.”  He collected his three balls and placed one in the free dry hand of the shorter one.

            “Kid doesn’t look like the doll type to me,” the carny said as he watched the badly aimed ball bounce off the tent roof of the booth.  “Good arm.”

            “He’d done better at the dolls.  He really wanted a doll.  I hear they’re very special dolls with powers to take you far.”  He handed the next ball down to the kid who had switched thumbs.

            “Balls,” corrected the carny.

            “What?”

            “Very special balls not dolls.”  The kid’s aim hadn’t improved and this one hit the edge of the table, bounced back and smacked the carny right in the middle of the forehead.  “Hey,” he complained.

            “Sorry,” the teenager apologized.

            “He could have put my eye out.”

            “Whatever.”  He passed down the last ball.  “So how much for the special balls not dolls?”

            “More than you can afford.  Get the kid a fish and move off.  And you should know peace signs went out in the sixties.”

            He watched as the teenager smirked at him, lifted the chain and kissed the peace symbol.  The boy grabbed the younger one and pulled him away from the booth screaming the whole way because he didn’t get a fish.  The carny could hear the teenager talking into his necklace.  “You guys hear that?”  He was yelling to make himself heard over the kid’s protests.  “You moved him and tore all those dolls up for nothing.  It’s in the balls.”

            In his attempt to get up, the carny fell through the chair and needed the help of the two big men in uniform he found surrounding him to lift him out, all the while bellowing about police brutality because of the welt in the middle of his forehead.  But it was his butt that cracked open the balls … the ping pong balls spreading great clouds of white powder up in the air.

*

            “The end,” I say.

            “That’s just sad,” the Pregnant Lady says, taking her feet down.  I wonder if she means the story or the outcome or the creator.

            “No, the word for it is ‘contrived’.  I’ll bet she had a story ready for any combination of words you pulled out of there.  Or maybe they all have the same words written on them.”  The Middle-Ager whiner is trying to work her way out of a desk designed for college sized students.

            “Well, it’s your turn.  Draw two out and make up the next story.”  I shake the fishbowls in their direction.

            “No, don’t,” warns the Goth Girl.  “They’re real fishbowls.  My hand still smells.  And you totally missed on dressing a teenage boy.  If I had been writing it …”

            I scrubbed them.  I really did but once that fishy smell gets in something ...  “Where are all of you going?”

            “Class is over.  You used up the whole time on that story,” Nerdy Girl says as she heads for the door.  She stops and turns back.

            “Yes?” I ask, afraid of the answer.

            “You screwed up.”

            “How?  Where?”

            “The slip of paper said ‘ping pong ball’ singular nor plural.”  She slips out the door before I can respond.

            I’ll bet she wants to be an editor when she grows up.   

I Hate the Word Blog.

I hate the word blog.  

“What are you doing?”  I’m writing my blog (Boring Life of Grace). 

“Let’s go to the movies.”  I can’t go to the movies with you because I haven’t written my blog … wait, I can blog (Belay Livelihood over Gaiety) later.  I am a blogger (Boring Life of Grace gets Eternally Recorded).  I blog so much, one was not enough so now I have two … blogs (Both Logs only Generates Shambles) that I can’t make myself write.  One for fiction, one for non-fiction and sometimes it’s hard to tell which is witch (read carefully, there are hidden mines).  (Warning – if you’re reading this, this is the non-fiction one.  If this had been an actual lie, you would have been directed to log onto the other one.)  It can work the other way. 

“Why can’t you come out and see me and your dad?” Because I have to write my blogs (Bad Lying on Genuine Subterfuge).  “What the hell is a blog?”  Good question Mom.  A blog is an article, a dissertation, an essay that …  “You hated writing essays in high school.  You would have rather sat around writing those weird ghost stories with sex …” Thanks Mom.  High school was … many, many, many years ago and the weird ghost stores with sex are on the other blog. 

But what I was trying to say before all these interruptions is my problem is with the actual word blog so let us turn to our tried and true friend Wikipedia who tells us that the word web log or weblog was used for the first time in December of 1997.  “You have kids older than that.  Your car is older than that.  But it’s so important for you to write it instead of coming to see us?”  Just ignore her; she’ll go away in a minute. 

 

Weblog became we blog which evolved into blog into blogging into blogger into a whole group of other words ending in blog that live in the Blogosphere which has its own Blogday.  It also has its day in court because you can be sued for liable or your employer can use what you say in your blog against you.  There are bad guys called Internet Trolls and good guys called the Blogger’s Code of Conduct.  “So it’s more like those space aliens and sex stories you used to write.”  Mom, if you know so much about my writing that must mean you were sneaking around in my room and reading my weird stories.  Now you don’t have to sneak.  All you have to do is log onto my blog and read them along with the whole world.  After reading the articles (not a blog) at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog I am proud to be a member of a growing community where the freedom to speak (write) our thoughts can change worlds (even weird space alien worlds).  No longer will I hesitate before declaring I too am a blogger (Big Liar of Genetically Generated Erotic Romances).

So think of it this way.  I am writing a blog about blogging (Brilliant Literature of Grace gets International Gain) which means I’ve completely run out of topics.      

Things to Ponder When You’re Suppose to be Writing

Why is ‘backdoor’ one word but ‘front door’ is two?  Same goes for the ‘front seat’ of a car versus the ‘backseat’ of the same damn car.  Maybe if you’re in the front, you get separate billing on the marquee.  (Then why doesn’t work with ‘front porch’ versus ‘back porch’?)

How do you make the computer type that thing over the E as in ‘fiancé’?

Where do all the words go that I type only to look up at the computer screen and find the cursor isn’t in the little box?  Do they go to word heaven?  Are they stuck in the keyboard?  Do they float around in Internet space only to land somewhere else?  Is there enough in there, that if I retrieve them they’ll help me meet the word count for the day?  Are they stacked inside and making the computer slow?

If my computer is smart enough to balance my checkbook (something I am incapable of), how come it’s not smart enough to know I’m going to misspell the same words over and over again and build a data base of those words?  (And why do I always type from when I mean form and vice-versa and Spell Check doesn’t even catch that?)  Why isn’t Spell Check smart enough to know I’m going to do it and fix them instead of yelling at me with red lines?  My favorite thing is when Spell Check can’t guess at what I’m trying to spell.  Makes me feel like I’m getting even for all those red marks (reminiscent of high school) it leaves speckled across the page.

Why can’t I remember from one time to the next, how to delete a page break?  (Hit the … ah … delete button.) 

I once wrote the line “and she lapped up the tears of joy his penis wept”.  An editor corrected it, saying if he/it were joyful, he/it wouldn’t be weeping.  I wonder how long it’s been since she’s even seen a penis, weeping or not.  Same editor took a male character completely out of the scene and put him at a pool table that never existed in my version.  Hello?  Don’t you think if I had put a pool table in there, there would have been pool table sex instead of someone just playing with the … balls and stick.  (Yes, I know it’s a cue but stick makes it sound more sexual.) 

If you type alright ‘all right’ and already ‘all ready’ and altogether ‘all together’ your word count will increase … a lot.

Why is ‘bookstore’ one word but ‘candy store’, ‘grocery store’ and ‘pizza store’ are two words?  (Okay, even I know they’re not called ‘pizza stores’ but just stop and imagine how great a store like that would be.) 

This is one I always get wrong.  I always say “why are your socks in the floor?” when in reality the socks are on the floor.  (Maybe it’s a southern thing like ice (iced) tea.)  If they were in the floor, molecules would be mingling and they would be ghost socks sinking into the floor (and then I wouldn’t have to pick them up but would the smell linger?).  So the body is lying on the floor not in it unless it’s a ghost too.

“Write what you know.”  I know if I write only what I know, it would be really boring and I wouldn’t get to spend all that time procrastinating while doing research on the Internet and learning something new (which boosts my energy level).  If I write what I know, every book would be just like the book I wrote before and that would be redundant.  If I write only what I’ve experienced, the sex scenes would be … wait …

I won’t be the first to say it but we need new words in our modern language to cover modern things.  We still dial the phone when there’s no dial.  “Excuse me, I must have dialed the wrong number.”  No, you punched in the wrong numbers because at our age and our eyesight, who the hell can see the buttons.  “Could you rewind and play back the tape from security camera number five?”  No, because there is no actual tape but only digitally recorded data.  And we all look like idiots making rolly down hand signals to the cute person in the car beside us because there is no handle to roll down the window with anymore.  But if we try to make push the window button down hand signals they might be misinterpreted it as something entirely different from what we want them to do.  (Although, wiggling the index finger in small circles to manipulate the knob back and forth and up and down might be an appropriate signal given the degree of cuteness of the person in the other vehicle.)  It’s not a checking account anymore but a debt card black hole. 

I recently had a book review request from a very conservative newspaper in the southern part of the commonwealth than panicked me.  (You do realize there’s sex in there … right? … right?)  The editor of a ladies’ weekly artsy insert asked that I send a copy of my latest to be read by one of their reviewers.  I envisioned some poor old gray haired lady wrapped in a shawl having the vapors in her parlor while her twenty-two cats looked on.  I sprinkled fairy dust (really hard to get the dust off of fairies (they don’t like it) and why doesn’t the rain wash the dust off of butterfly wings) over a copy, snail mailed it to her and spent weeks wringing my hands wondering if she had hyperventilated.  Turns out she loved the book and wrote a great review (and recommended a new type of hand soap but I don’t know if it was for the dust or chafing from wringing).  The moral of the story is just like our children, we don’t know what will happen when we send them out into the world to stand on their own (right oh daughter oh mine?) or the moral of the story could be that there are certain times I should ignore my imagination (if only I could).

When Characters Won’t Behave

 

            “Hey baby.”  That’s him speaking.

            “Humm.”  That’s her trying to ignore him.

            “Whatcha doin?”

            Thinking it’s obvious.  “Reading.”

            “Whatcha reading?”

            “Ah … a book.”

            “Is it any good?”

            “No, I’m reading it because I don’t like it.”  Men, she thought.

            Him, studying the cover.  “You’re being facetious.”

            She’s impressed he even knows the word let alone how to spell it.  “Why would you think that?”

            “I can see your … the front of the book.”

            “So?”

            “So that’s a book by your favorite author, Grace Thomas.”

            Not having an answer, she doesn’t answer.

            “That’s two ‘answers’ in the same sentence,” he points out.

            “And that should be in italics instead of single quote marks.”  She turned a page.

            “Have you ever tried to type a blog?  You have to stop and go back and tell it to italicize then it jumps to another part of the text.  Besides, she’s typing this, not me.”

            “She who?  Wonder when spell check is going to recognize ‘blog’ is a word?”

            Ignoring the first question, he asks, “Isn’t she the one who writes all those sexy books?”

            “Grace Thomas writes mystery novels.”

            “Mystery novels where there’s a sex scene in every chapter.”

            She knows what repeated use of the word ‘sex’ means.  “I’m sure there’s not … that type … of scene in every chapter.”

            “Wait.  That’s the first book in the series.  You’ve already read that one.”

            “What’s it to you what I read?”

            “There’s no other reason to read a book you’ve already read except to get hot from the porn.”

            She is getting hot but it’s not sexual.  “She writes erotica not porn.”

            “What’s the difference?”

            “Well, if you don’t know I’m not going to explain it.  Go look it up on the Internet where what you look at is porn.”

            Now he’s mad, too.  “How do you know what I look at on my own laptop?”  His lap top is fizzling. 

            “Oh, please.  No one can look at that much sports.  I’m rereading her books to study the plot … and because she hasn’t written the next one.”

            “Sex is a sport,” he makes one more try.  “You never complain when we watch porn together.  We could go watch some now.  Maybe she’s blocked.”

            She slowly places her bookmark in between the pages and shuts the book knowing she’s not going to get any work done.  “I guess you downloaded some new skin flick.”

            “Yeah.  Wanna come see?”

            “No.”

            “No?”

            “No.”

            Him, in case you’re lost.  “How do you know how much porn I watch?  Have you been in the history on my computer?”

            “Of course not.  I don’t have to.”  She’s wondering about their history and how much longer it would last.  “You leave the sound up loud enough for me to hear the hokey music and moans and groans.  Listening to someone else have sex is disgusting.”

            “Well certainly no one has heard those noises coming from here lately.”

            “That’s not true.  We had sex just …”  She couldn’t remember the last ‘just’.

            “Right, can’t remember can you?”

            “Stay out of my head.”

            “No body is getting any head.”

            “That’s ‘nobody’.”

            “That’s what I said.  No bodies touching or even sitting in the same room.”

            “What do you mean she’s blocked?”

            “What?”  Now he’s the one lost.

            “Back up there on the page, you said maybe she’s blocked.  Do you mean she has writer’s block?”

            “No.  She’s writing this, isn’t she?”

            “Who knows what the hell is going on.”

            “I think she has a sex block.”

            “What does that mean?”

            “I mean she broke it off with the latest and there’s no other on the horizon.  She aint’ gettin’ any so neither are we.”

            “You are mean.”

            “What?”

            “You said ‘I mean’.”

            “That’s not what I mean.”

            “Stop saying ‘mean’.  That’s the dumbest, sexist, only-a-man-would-think-like-that thing you’ve ever said.”  Her voice has risen up several octaves. 

            “Is not.”  He’s wondering which statement she’s talking about.

            “Is too and I can prove it.”

            “So prove it.”

            “If she doesn’t have a man in her life, she’d be horny and writing it out would ease the stress.”

            He’s stressed by now and not the good kind.  “That’s just stupid.”

            “Did you just call me stupid?”

            “No but if the g-string fits … you women think words can solve everything.”

            “And you men think watching porn will relieve you of responsibility.”

            “Stay off my computer.  Certainly gives me relief which I ain’t gettin’ here.”

            “Now you’re just repeating yourself.  I get you’re point.  You’re not getting any …”  Her face takes on that blank getting a flash look.

            “What?”

            “I figured it out.”

            “What?”

            “Why she’s blocked?”

            “Why?”

            “If all we do is fight and we’re characters she’s writing and we’re not having sex then her characters aren’t having sex but fighting all the time then she can’t write sex … erotica.”

            “That’s the dumbest … wait.”

            “What now?”

            “How ‘bout makeup sex.”

            “That’s ‘make up’.  ‘Makeup’ is what women put on their face.”

            “Well, let’s face it.  It’s all you women’s fault.”

            “Oh I can’t wait to hear the explanation for that.”

            “You all are the ones with the power, babe.”

            “Don’t call me babe and just because you’re southern doesn’t mean you should say ‘you all’.  What power?”

            “The power to say yes.”

            “Yes?”

            “Yes?”

            “Well … maybe.”

           

                

           

               

Book Blurbs

Did you ever hear a song everyday on the way to work and then again on the way back home?  You find yourself humming it at your desk and turning up the volume and singing loudly in your car where no one can complain about the earsplitting level of volume or your style of singing (as in ‘ain’t got no’ style).  You’re hooked on this song because the universe plays it for you twice a day and if you surf quickly enough, you can hear it even more (just ignore the fact that the same company owns all the radio stations in your area with the same play lists and commercials).  You might even, after years of not, consider going out and buying a CD or downloading it.  Deejays no longer tell listeners the title or artist of the song they just played, (young people apparently know by osmosis or maybe it’s those ear buds which if you really think about it as a product name sounds like some alien implant which is what they do with … sorry … got off track) so you type the lyrics into Google, find the artist, go to YouTube and find the video and … wait … what the hell …

The singer doesn’t look like anything you could ever imagine even after a long night of drinking (although he looks like he does that on a regular bases) and the video is nowhere near what you have been picturing in your head.  You’ve been seeing fields with butterflies flapping around wildflowers or a big tall mountain complete with tinkling spring tinkling (yes I know, but two tinkles are better than one) over mossy rocks but this guy is walking through a junkyard filled with … well, junk cars and half-naked babes dancing around really rusty metal.  (Hint:  You’re getting old when you worry about the health and safe working conditions of the half-naked babes.)  

That’s how it goes with book blurbs and the cover art.  Unless you’re looking for a specific author, you’re scanning the shelves in the bookstore with your reader/shopper radar on.  (Why do grocery stores turn their books face out and the big bookstores show you the spine?  Because when you’re in the bookstore you’re shopping for a book and when you’re in the grocery store you’re goofing off instead of fighting the little old ladies over after the last pack of steak that’s on sale.)  Publishers know this, having attended many extensive marketing courses and design the outside of the product (the book) to catch your attention.

The Blurbs

I have a confession.  I hate writing blurbs (and the synopsis, but that’s a different problem) but it’s all part of the writing business.  I’ve had entire novels not rejected by publishers but had to write the blurb three times before they accepted it.  Mine either sound like a short outline: Couple meets, has adventures, has sex (a lot), solves mystery or they come out sounding like Internet porn sites:  An erotic exciting romp through the secret world of espionage as our world tripping couple find themselves in bed with the bad guys.  See what I mean?  I wouldn’t buy either of those books (except maybe to see why the heroes are in bed with the villains) and I hate to admit it but the word ‘romp’ does appear in one of my real blurbs, but only one (learn from your mistakes and don’t repeat them).  Book blurbs (I think that should be spelled ‘burps’) are like movie trailers.  You never really know until you sample the product (and don’t ever forget, to the publisher, your book is their product they’re trying to sell.)    

How many times have you stood in the grocery store blocking the aisle with your full-size cart that has three items in it (one of which is hair dye), reading the blurb front cover to continued-on-the-back cover and thought you had found a great novel only to get it home and discovered you couldn’t get past page twenty.  (Okay it’s true; I never stop reading a book once I’ve started it in hopes that it has to get better.  Bad movies I just turn off and send them back to Netflix.)  And how many times have you read the blurb and still have no idea what the book is about only to find you’ve dug out (of the sales pile) a hidden gem you’ll read over and over. 

Yes, I have books I reread every year (when I should be writing) such as ‘The Complete Sherlock Holmes’ and Barbara Michael’s (aka Barbara Mertz, Elizabeth Peters.  See, Ma?  I’m not the only one with lots of names.) ‘Ammie … Come Home’ which is the book that made me want to become a writer.  The movie wasn’t bad either.  Or I read ‘Maynard’s House’ by Herman Raucher which is my favorite rainy-Sunday-there’s-nothing-on-television book.  Imagine trying to carry a storyline with basically one character through an entire novel who may or may not be seeing ghosts and witches.  (Hint:  Rereading is a talent you want to practice because by the time you get done editing your own manuscript you will have read it so many times even the sex scenes will seem dull.  And wait until the editor edits the part you just edited on their suggestion.) 

Maybe there are writers out there whose careers consist of writing blurbs.  Maybe bad writers write great blurbs and great writers write terrible ones which might be a new standard for choosing which book to buy in the grocery store.  (Steak is bad for you anyway and you can’t afford it if you buy a book.  Eat or read, the great dilemma of the week between paychecks.)  My books will be the ones with the really short blurbs because I couldn’t think of thing to write in them.

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            Apparently, that’s all I have to say about blurbs so I will add cover art to this chapter as it is what the blurbs are printed on and this chapter isn’t long enough..

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Cover Art

Walk into any bookstore and start down the paperback aisle of any genre.  It’s like being a kid in a candy store.  (Yes, I know that’s a cliché but I started with food analogies and I’m damn well going to finish with them.  Besides, I’m hungry which is why all the food references.)  Covers with eye-catching bright jellybean colors or pictures of marshmallow fluff snow covered places you want to find yourself at with a cup of latté and a cigarette (no smoking in the candy or any store) wink back at you from the shelves.  Chocolate-eyed nymphs in modern clothes chase taffy-muscled … (wait, that one really didn’t work) … chase rock-candy-hard-muscled gods across fields of lime-green sherbet grass.

Okay, enough of that.  Next time you’re in the book section pretend (use that imagination) that you’re in an art gallery.  Paintings, abstracts, photographs (color and black and white), see-though to the next page, fold out origami, four covers together make a picture … anything goes in cover art as long as it attracts the buyer (you) enough to make you walk over, pick up the book and read the blurb.  (Hint:  See the above section of this chapter but if you got here by skipping it then you don’t know what I’m talking about anyway.)  I personally like the ones with the dark and mysterious line or charcoal drawings.  I hate it when one book comes out with different covers.  I end up buying the same book I’ve all ready bought.  Thankfully, cover art is not something the writer has a lot to do with.  (Unless like me, you publish your own eBooks then you have an excuse to spend hours upon hours searching public domain websites for artwork.)

            Most publishers will ask you to make suggestions to the cover designer but you have to remember, the artist has never read your book which is sort of like drawing the suspect when you weren’t at the scene of the crime.  If you propose a wall with a street sign on it, think about how many kinds of walls and different types of street signs there are.  So just like that music video did not match the fantasy you see, your book cover is not going to look the way you imagined it.  Some will be better and some will be much worse, but it will never match the picture in your head unless you go to art school and who has time for that.   

Night Mov-ies

“What are you thinking about the moment right before you fall asleep?”

            It is a question I have asked since I was a child.  Things are so weird in my own head, I wanted to make sure everyone else was like me or I was like them.  Of course, I found out I wasn’t … like them and to be careful of whom I asked the question and to never ever tell what went on in my mind.

            And I’m not talking about sexual fantasies.  Those fall into a different category and time frame.

            I’m talking about when the temperature is right, the covers are situated, the other (partner, lover, dog, cat or teddy bear) is quiet, the darkness lays soft, the pillows are in their correct position and the night clouds are gently passing by on the inside of your eyelids.  (Does yours change color, have lightening bolts, swirl in patterns, faces?)  Right there at that exact moment of pre-sleep.  What are you thinking of?

            Is it what happened today or what might happen tomorrow?  Is it that you should get up and check the expiration date of the milk you just ate three bowls of cereal with?  Did that burp taste a little off?  Maybe it’s that perceived insult from a coworker (who, right now, is having wild sex with her boyfriend and is definitely not lying around thinking about you) that’s floating around in there.  Or is it worry over that spot growing on the back of your right calf that you can almost see by twisting into a pretzel.  

            I tell myself stories, bedtime stories.  There are whole towns, countries, planets and universes inside my head all populated by a citizenry of characters.  There are good guys and bad guys, evil deed doers and lovers, friends and enemies, aliens and fantasy folks.  It can be any time, past, present or future.  It can be any place, real or imagined.  It can be any season or time of day or night.

            My passport into this world is to lay comfortable, close off my ‘oh my god did I lock the door, turn off the coffee pot and what was that noise’ voice, drift with those clouds and form a picture in my head.  It can be absolutely anywhere at absolutely anytime.  Next, I people it with . . . well, people.  Historical, fictional, real or ones I don’t know where they come from.  They just show up fully formed and alive (relatively speaking).  Story lines, plots and acting and reacting with each other just happens.  I don’t plot my dreams and I don’t plot these semi-dreams, day-(night)-dreams.  I step into the story all ready knowing my place and my lines but I don’t know how I all ready know that.

            Adventures in the mind are more thrilling and less dangerous than real ones, the star is always me, as the director I can take the story anywhere and they’re really not very expensive at all. 

            Sometimes, there are some really great plots or lines of dialogue or one of those ‘ah ha’ moments when I know whatever I’m seeing or doing in there, would make an incredible novel.  I know I have to wake up long enough to jot down a few words, just enough for me to remember this enormous idea for a book.  I keep a pad and pen by the bed for just these occasions (and can never interrupt my handwriting in the morning) but normally I don’t get up.  Moving will destroy the fragile bubble of the world that I am encased in.  So I convince myself I will remember and keep repeating a phrase that will be my mantra to unlock the story into a novel.  (These are the mornings when the other person in bed wakes up craving sesame chicken for breakfast and doesn’t know why.  It wasn’t real sesame seeds in there but poison disguised as sesame seeds.  Let’s hope I never chant ‘the gun is in the bottom drawer under my thongs’ or something along those lines.)  But I never remember.  I always forget in the clatter of the alarm clock.  Whole libraries of New York Times Bestseller List novels have been lost because I didn’t get up and write down the idea.

            Normally, my semi-dreaming fades into real dreaming and sleep.  Rarely, my self-told story becomes my self-told dream and I can become even more a part of my own story.  Those are great dreams unlike the normal ‘I’m in trouble with my mother for doing or not doing or not doing something right that I didn’t know I was supposed not be or to be doing right in the first place’ dreams.  I would much rather dream of rescuing my beloved from the deep dark dank cave where the baddie is holding him captive until I deliver the secret formula for … zzzzz.

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            Please note:  The above mentioned technique works well in doctors’ and dentists’ offices, the Department of Motor Vehicles and Thanksgiving dinners with the in-laws but is not the prescribed method for dealing with traffic jams or that stoplight that catches me everyday no matter how fast or slow I drive.

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The Ten Percent Predicament

I was going to call this chapter ‘Writer’s Block’ or ‘Author’s Arrest’ (no, not that kind of arrest) or ‘Novelist’s Snag’ but that doesn’t accurately describe my problem.  Then I considered ‘The Seven-Percent Solution’ but the math didn’t work (big surprise) and Nicholas Meyer did a better job than I ever will.  My problem would be better illustrated as ‘Hopping Hack’.

            I get one of those inspired inspirations and start out all gangbusters (wonder what that phrase really means?) on a book.  Dialogues, plots, scenes and plot twists all pour off my fingers onto the keyboard to be projected on the computer screen.  But eventually, the high fades and my fingers start to hesitate and my brain slows down (or someone interrupts me).

            There comes a point in capturing the essence of a new project where you just can’t say ‘female lead’, ‘male lead’ and ‘humorous sidekick’ anymore.  You have to stop and figure out what these peoples’ names and back stories are.  Once you have that, you have to give them a place to do whatever it is they’re doing in and then you have to decide if it’s going to be a fictional place or a real place.  If it’s a real place, then you have to stop and do research on wherever you placed them.  If it’s a fictional place, you have to stop and make it up in your head and on paper (well, screen).  And what do they look like?  What age group?  (As I get older, I find it harder to write younger but that means pretty soon all my characters will be in wheelchairs (oh wait, some are) … all my characters will be old and fat and gray just like me.)  What do they do for a living?  I have to figure out all the assorted things that make up a human being for each person.

            Meanwhile, the characters are sitting around twiddling their thumbs (or each others) or they wander off, get into trouble and show up in other stories.  And I’m bogged down in a mire of baby name books and Internet research until … ah ha … the light goes off again as I read a story about a guy who found undeveloped film from 1960’s in his attic left by some previous owner and he took it to the photo shop to see if they could do anything with it and they found pictures of … oh wow, that would make a really great story so I open a new file and start again.

            That’s where the ten percent comes in.  I have folders inside of folders that have the first thirty to fifty pages (I’m on a roll here and am not stopping to do the math) of really great stories in them.  It’s not that the fire goes out; it’s that the fire jumps the river of my thought stream and rekindles somewhere else.  So I end up hopping back and forth between ideas and hacking down the brush with a machete so I don’t end up with a forest fire and burn out before my time.

            I know I have to stop, dig a trench and work on just one project at a time until I finish it or I’m never going to finish anything ever again.  My career will die.  I will die and they’ll find my body buried in an avalanche of paper but finishing a project seems like an overwhelming amount of words (80,000) to find.  And trust me, I know from experience there are long stretches of oh-my-god-this-is-really-boring-writing and why-why-did-I-ever-want-to-be-a-writer out there waiting on me. 

I think I’ll try capturing all the exciting scenes and sex scenes and action scenes first, thinking I’ll go back and fill in the boring stuff later and the more fun stuff I write the less fill in there will be.  But this method produces time warps that tangle and weave, vortexes that let other things enter the story and some really great chapters that fit absolutely nowhere in any book (unless I start a whole new book around them).  I print and cut and paste and edit and sort until the original germ of the idea has died along with my inspiration and energy.  I give up and go play computer games until suddenly my brain sparks and I can see how it all goes together (even the boring stuff) and I race to get it all down before the fire dies.

Looking back on this chapter, I’ve discovered the ten percent is the time I spend writing, the eighty percent is the time I spend worrying about or planning to write (I left ten percent free for non-important stuff like job, kids, chores).  If I could switch the writing percentage with the worrying and planning time, I could fill library shelves with the books (or flash drives with ebooks).  I’ll bet if I go look, I can find an article on the Internet on how to do just that.                      

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Note:  I looked up gangbusters.  Together as one word, it means law enforcement that breaks up organized criminal groups.  But separated as in Gang Busters© it was a radio show, television show and movie about criminal cases.

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Intrepid Interviewers

 New and inexperienced writers should not speak in public or give live interviews. No matter how much you practice or anticipate, reporters and interviewers will always catch you off guard and writers like to revise, edit and embellish too much to give a good answer on the first try. If it takes me two months of correcting to get one sentence to come out right, guess how much of an idiot I’m going to sound answering questions right off the top of my head with no time for revising.




Example


Interviewer: “Where did you grow up?”

Writer: “My family is from the Allegany Mountains but because there was no work other than farming and they couldn’t make a legal living scratching in the rocky soil and moon shining, ginsenging (sanging is not what hill people do in church on Sundays), growing pot in the corn and poaching are illegal, they moved to the Shenandoah Valley where industry gobbles up healthy humans to manufacture products no one needs so they move from plant to plant to follow the jobs until the factories spit them back out when they’re old and can no longer work to retire on a farm where they don’t have the energy to do the farm chores.”

Interviewer: “So you were raised in the valley.”

Writer: “Yep.”

Interviewer: “Did you always want to be a writer?”

Writer: “No. In high school, I wanted to be a marine biologist where I could live for months on end on a ship or in an underwater city by myself studying and writing. The training to be an astronaut took too long. I considered forest ranger which is basically the same but only on dry land …”

Interviewer: (Trying to get back control.) “Underwater cities?”

Writer: “… But working as a ranger seemed like too much walking and those ginsengers shoot back so I wanted to be the witch in the cabin where deer would come up on the front porch and eat muffin crumbs out of my hand while I had my morning coffee but I couldn’t figure out how to make money to pay for the muffins or the coffee as no one buys potions anymore or the potions they do buy come from the beauty or herb counters at the dollar discounters. I mean do you really feel comfortable buying your herbs at a dollar store?”

Interviewer: “Speaking of witchcraft, I understand you …”

Writer: “But by my senior year, all these stories and characters were clouding up my brain demanding my attention so I knew I needed a job where I could sit around and write and get paid for it. At first, I tried housewife but I couldn’t get along with the boss, the hours were horrible and the pay sucked. Then I found the perfect solution as a security guard. No one expects anything from the security guard. We’re basically invisible so I could work long hours, usually through the night and get my writing done.”

Interviewer: “Talking about your writing, in most of your books … well … in all of your books, there’s a strong sexual component.”

Writer: “Yes.”

(Silence except for the sound of crickets chirping and a rumble from the interviewer’s stomach.)

Interviewer: “Perhaps you could explain to our readers why you include explicit sexual descriptions in just about every chapter of your novels.”

Writer: (Wait … it’s not every chapter … I pretty sure it’s not.) “What would you like to eat?”

Interviewer: “I … er … what?”

Writer: “Your stomach says you’re hungry. Close your eyes and picture yourself dressed in beautiful clothes sitting in an elegant restaurant. Now order any meal from anywhere on the earth. What would you order?”

Interviewer: “Salad.”

Writer: “So even in your wildest dreams you’re on a diet? That’s just sad. Okay. Picture yourself naked laying in the most erotic location you can think of. Where would you be?”

Interviewer: (Not answering the question.) “What does this have to do with sex in your books?”

Writer: “Fantasizing. Fantasies. The sex in my books are fantasies. People read my books to escape. We all need air, water, food, shelter and emotional support to survive. Your salad is the basic but a deep dish pizza loaded with meat and cheese is more satisfying. My readers are sitting at work goofing off on the Internet or at home where the chores want to be done or in waiting rooms full of screaming kids. My books take them out of there and place them naked on a horse riding along a crystal blue sea with the lover of their choice. They don’t have to worry about the sand chafing and they don’t even have to come up with the sexual positions. I do that for them.”

Interviewer: “And why do they need you to do that for them?”

Writer: “Well, I guess they don’t really need me (starting to feel underappreciated) but I think most of the human race has forgotten how to dream, how to fantasize. I can understand it. We’re bombarded with images all day long. (Of course, someone had to write the premises behind those images before they can become images.) We don’t have to fantasize anymore because movies, television, games and the Internet do it for us or did before reality television started killing even those outlets. I can’t imagine anyone fantasizing about a reality show. We’re so overwhelmed by media; we have to take classes to learn to meditate just to clear our minds. You couldn’t even come up with a decent fake meal or an erotic location to get naked in.”

Interviewer: “And how does that …?”

Writer: “Except for childish games with toys and excluding artistic people and mental patients, everyone’s first experience with imagination are sexual fantasies. I just add mine to my stories.”

Interviewer: “So all the sex scenes in your books are things you have or want to …”

Writer: (Interrupting.) “And now I’m really hungry. Let’s go get a pizza. You’re too skinny anyway.”