Remember being at a party or a bar or in a class when you saw That Guy across the room — and he was looking at you, too? And how, all of a sudden, the day got just special, kinda exciting? And your heart started beating just a little bit faster?
Maybe he inched toward you, maybe you inched toward him — can’t remember exactly who moved first, but pretty soon there you were and there he was, standing right next to you. Your heart was pounding so’s that’s all you could hear. You were too giddy to speak, hoping he’d go first.
You held your breath; he opened his mouth and –
Nothing. He had nothing, really, to say. He was bland. He was boring. He wasn’t That Guy, after all.
Ladies and gentlemen — meet Earl.
Not the bad boy Earl we’ve been obsessing over for days, but a kinder, gentler Earl who merely grazes our southern fingertips with his lips instead of moving in for a whirlwind deep kiss before leaving us, broken and powerless.
And it’s okay. Yes, it is. We saw waves this afternoon, and they were plenty big enough for me.
 Maybe we’ll get some rain. We’ll probably get some wind, but it’s still pretty wimpy out there. Honestly, I will be happier without tree limbs crashing down. And with the electricity staying on. I’m still a little spacy from the root canal I had this morning so I’ll probably go to bed early. A little bland and boring myself…
But I fully intend to be on the beach first thing in the morning to survey whatever Earl has left behind.
Oh, look. Isn’t that Gaston in the corner there, by the punch bowl? I wonder if he could be That Guy?
Sure doesn’t look like a Category Four hurricane is headed directly toward us, does it? And yet…. as with any good story, you just don’t know what’s going to happen before it does, even though the clues and warning signs and tingle on the back of your neck tell you that — something — is getting ready to hit. As John Irving put it: “Beware of the undertoad.”
I noticed on the way to the beach that some of the Mom and Pop motels have No Vacancy signs up, even though traffic, cars and people are pretty sparse. Do the old-timers know something that NOAA doesn’t? Are they getting ready to head off-island for the storm? The bridge closes when winds hit 40 mph, and category 4 winds fly at, oh good lord, 133 to 155 mph.
But the beach itself was calm, beautiful, soothing. Polly swam; I walked.
And, of course, talked. There aren’t that many folks on the beach at 8 AM, and I try to talk with all of them — whether they want to or not. Hey, it’s called research, people.
So here are a couple of exchanges from yesterday and today. Any one of these threads could go somewhere, really, if someone were interested:
Yesterday morning there was only one other person on the beach. He was just a speck far ahead of me, and every so often he stopped to light a cigarette, an acquired skill set in salt spray and wind. When he turned and headed back toward the parking lot, he stopped to pet Polly.
“Be careful up ahead. Someone busted a beer bottle and left the broken end pointed up. I buried it as best I could.” He shook his head. “Some people.” His hair was longer than mine and it blew across his face.
“Yeah, some people are kinda weird.”
He looked at me maybe a second too long and said, “You got that right. Weird. Really weird.” Then we both walked on.
He looked oddly familiar to me, but it wasn’t until a couple of minutes later that I put it together.
Charles Manson. The guy looked just like Charles Manson, only no beard. It was the eyes.
Later I found the broken bottle in the sand. He hadn’t done such a great job covering it up after all.
**
This morning I saw a guy walking four shih tzu’s. Our shih tzu died in January so of course I had to talk to him and pet the dogs, who were panting in the heat. The four dogs all dug a collective hole in the sand while we were talking and climbed in to get cool. He told me that the first time he saw them do that at the beach, he turned part of his yard into a big sand pit for the dogs. And they love it. But I can’t help wondering — how do the neighbors feel about looking out their window and seeing a big sand pit next door? Filled with little dogs?
He also said he’d worked with a lot of the local dog rescues but eventually stopped because they were “too political.”
Now he works exclusively with cat rescue. I’m still wrestling with this one. I’m a cat person, too, but I’m trying to figure out why dogs would be political and cats not? Maybe I should talk with the Superior Court Judge candidate about politics?
**
A middle aged couple and a younger man, probably their son, had just set up chairs and fishing gear when I walked by. They were from away, were here for a week, and worried that they might have to evacuate before the storm hit. The young man and Polly hit it off great while I talked with the older man about weather possibilities.
About a half hour later we walked back past them. This time I noticed that the young man had considerable physical limitations and a bunch of adaptive and walking aids. I asked if they’d caught any fish yet, and the older man nodded and said that the young man had caught one, a small fish.
It took the young man a good 30 seconds to raise both hands, spread them apart about 6 inches, and say, barely audibly, “This big.”
The grin across his face was just as big when he said it.
Made. My. Day.
Full disclosure: All I did was take the pictures this morning. I am making no recommendations about what, if anything, should be done with the Superior Court Judge and his/her position. 
Oh, I am SO excited to have found this wonderful poster at Merit Badger’s wonderful site! (Click on it to enlarge it in all its gory – I mean glory.)
Especially right after Crystal’s book review.
Especially since Merit Badger is doing a series of merit badges for readers and writers. How great is that?
Check it out. Right now.
And have a nice week-end, everyone.
I got my teeth cleaned yesterday, and you know what that means: another book review from Crystal, my dental hygienist.
Once she stuck the suction tube and her hands and all those little torture devices in my mouth, she had her captive audience and got started:
“I just read Eat, Pray, Love…. I don’t know. I mean, I learned a lot about Bali and Italy from it that I’d never know otherwise – but that middle section, Pray? It was like 50, 75 pages of watching paint dry.
“I swear, Julia Roberts couldn’t have known what she was signing up for with this one. I mean, yoga and deep breathing – it’s boring enough to do, let alone read about it – but watch it at the movies? I don’t think so.
“My hubby and my ten-year old son and I went to the movies this week-end, and the thought of them sitting there and groaning and complaining through that – uh uh. We saw that 3-D kids movie instead.
“I’m still gonna see the movie anyway. I’d rather go alone. I love Julia – I’m just hoping she’s able to pull something, anything, out of that middle part.”
She squirted some water in my mouth and pulled out all the heavy artillery.
“Okay, you can rinse now.”
Another book review in the can.
I had this ready last Friday, but got waylaid by real life until now….
**
“I personally think you’re nuts.” He glanced away from her considerable bosom as he spoke.
“Coming from you, Jerry, I consider that high praise.” She flicked her ash into his Blackberry and stood up. “My new attorney will be in touch.”
“Tell him to take his time.”
He felt lighter, cleaner once she’d left the office. Definitely a good day so far. He’d wanted to give the new iPhone a whirl anyway.
I’m thinking about November and National Novel Writing Month. (Who reading this blog isn’t?)
Last year I started NaNoWriMo with a page or two of scribbled notes and little else. Now, almost a year later, I’ve still got an unfinished draft with some decent characters and snazzy scenes, as well as a bunch of dead ends and ho-hum characters yawning ‘so what?’
I didn’t have a clear sense of where I was going with the manuscript when I started (which I thought would be okay, given the ‘road trip’ nature of the thing) and consequently, I haven’t gotten there – wherever and whatever there is – yet. I’m not ready to give up on Tap Dancing at the County Fair, but I’d sure like to approach this year’s NaNoWriMo with a better sense of direction.
And I’d like your help.
There are a couple of paths I might take. First is to build this novel on the goals and some of the story segments (this and this) I started in Merrilee Faber’s Creativity Workshop. I want to explore these questions in more depth: Why do people break the rules/break the law? What happens – good and bad – when they do?
I want to answer these questions journeying through the heart of darkness, A/K/A suburbia. So the role of ‘place’ is important. I’ve got a tentative title: cul-de-sac. I love that the literal translation is ‘bottom of the bag,’ which seems apt to me.
As I see it now, this would be a battle between revenge and redemption playing out in the ‘burbs by those seemingly normal folks who pass for our neighbors. Originally I thought about a mythic journey although that may be too much to ask of my brain cells in their current state.
But. I want to have a much clearer roadmap before starting. I’d like to have some semblance of a plot – a beginning, middle, end. I’m not too worried about character or dialogue, since they come relatively easily to me (at least in comparison to plot), but I’d like to build some kind of structure so that I’ll know how and where this thang is supposed to end before November 1 arrives and I start writing it.
Which leads me to Plan B.
 How about writing a mystery? (What do you see at the top of my blog, in bright green letters?) I love reading them, how about trying to write one? I do think following a formula, laid out in advance of writing, works for a mystery – even though I’m not so sure it’s appropriate for a more literary, character-driven piece (which is what I was thinking originally with Plan A).
I took the ed2go mystery writing course a couple of years ago, and maybe the timing was wrong. It just didn’t do it for me. But I found The Classic 12-Chapter Mystery Formula yesterday, and found myself nodding – not nodding off – as I read it. It made sense to me!
So now what?
Should I focus on a whodunit and follow a genre formula?
As I was typing the above questions – cue ‘Twilight Zone’ theme music here (yes, I’m that old) – I got my daily Writer’s Digest email titled The Dos and Don’ts of Combining Genres. I’m generally of the there-are-no-coincidences school of thought, so I found this pretty interesting timing.
How about Plan C?
Can I pack my angst-filled suburban characters into a murder mystery formula and still end up with something semi-literary? And occasionally even funny?
On the one hand, it doesn’t seem so ‘creative’ to fill in the blanks of a prescribed formula. On the other hand, who am I kidding? I can’t seem to pull a compelling plot out of my brain on my own, no way no how. Maybe the structure of a formula is just what I need.
Any thoughts on this? Anyone familiar with the 12-Chapter Mystery Formula? Or the Dos and Don’ts article?
Do they make sense? Do I make sense?
Should I stick with my original somewhat vague goals and the revenge/redemption conflict? If so, what are some good resources so I won’t spend November and beyond going around and around in circles?
Should I leave Shirley and her crew stewing in the suburbs while I dust off my Nancy Drew persona? Or should I bring them along for the ride in Nancy’s blue roadster? If so, any good ideas for how to bring this stuff together? Angst and a couple of yucks?
Am I considering too much? Or too little? Am I making any sense?
I’d love to know what you think. And what I should do come November. Thanks.
Ms. Natasha. In the study. With the keyboard.
“I don’t care if he is in the hospital. Serves him right. Thinks he can just ignore me — and when he’s working on my dime, too – ”
She snorted. “He’ll be the one who pays.”
“Shirley, I’m not sure I want to represent you in this matter. There isn’t a reasonable person this side of the Mississippi would favor you over Jake on this.”
She glared at him across the desk and the air grew still, cold. “Well then. We’ll just have to find some unreasonable people, won’t we?”
I spent a couple of mornings last week helping my friend Jane organize books in her school library. Jane is the librarian at an awesome new arts and design magnet school that opens in a couple of weeks. She’s spent much of the summer bar-coding, stamping, fingerprinting and whatever else they do to new books to get them ready to put on the shelves, all the while climbing over the mountains of boxed books lugged in from her old school’s library.
When I got to the school, my job was to wrangle some order out of both old and new and put fiction, in alphabetical order by author, on the shelves. I could do this: Zen out while lining up all four zillion Arthur chapter books in order. Piece of cake.
There’s something about being in a quiet space and handling lots of books that encourages you to … think. About the books you’ve read, the ones you haven’t. The books you loved as a child. The ones you loved reading to your child.
The books you haven’t written.
[Warning: I’m going off on a tangent now; I can’t seem to help myself. Skip ahead if you don’t want/need any factoids about my life and are engrossed in A Day in the Library.
My first job out of college was editorial assistant in the children’s department of a major Boston publisher. I could even see what was claimed to be Mother Goose’s grave if I looked out the office window.
Since my current, unrealistic goal of publishing at least one novel has taken over my life, I beat myself up occasionally with “what if’s?” What if I’d stayed on in publishing? Would someone be putting my novels on the shelf of a quiet library or Barnes & Noble right now? Even better, would someone be grabbing them off the shelf? Would I be the editor giving the nay or yay to one of your manuscripts?
Who knows? All I know is that at the age of 22, I could. not. sit. still. I proofread manuscripts, checked vocabulary levels, and wrote teacher guides, but a desk job was torture for me. At the end of fifteen months, I quit my publishing job, bought a backpack and an airline ticket and headed to Europe for an extended hippie tour. I haven’t looked back at Mother Goose, at least not for a good long while. Until now.]
Meanwhile, back in the stacks: By now I’d made it to the G’s and Blue Willow and Julie of the Wolves, two of my old favorites.
 But the H, I, and J’s were beckoning and so I forged ahead. Carl Hiaasen rocks. His kids’ books are just as much fun as his adult books – a great mix of reverence for the environment with irreverence for everything else. I wanted to sit right down and read Hoot (yes, that is Jimmy Buffett playing the science teacher in the movie version), but the K’s were calling.
The K’s! Carolyn Keene country! I longed to pull out an old Nancy Drew and curl up in the corner with it for an hour or two. But I’d committed to loading all the fiction through K on the shelves so I fingered them only briefly as I shelved The Hidden Staircase. Some other day, perhaps.
I took one long peek into From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and then the K’s were done. I was done.
So, what did I learn from getting down and dirty with Kiddy Lit, letters A through K?
- There are more creepy books for kids now than there were back in the early Goosebumps days.
- Vampires are more menacing now than they were in Bunnicula. And more prevalent, but you already knew that, unless you’ve been living in a cave.
- Badly written sports stories are just as popular as ever.
- Really dark, really shiny book jackets with titles in bright colors are inviting. I want to look inside them. Right now.
- Old, tired ‘library bindings’ don’t make me want to pick them up. Ever.
- Many ‘literary fiction’ prizewinning authors have written a bunch of other titles as well. In series. In different genres. On different topics. They just keep writing. Jean Craighead George, for example, is almost ninety and still going strong.
- There’s a boatload of young adult books out there that are worth exploring. Old ones, new ones. Lots of them. I want to get inside them.
So about that boatload of Y.A. fiction…
Early in this post, I mentioned Julie of the Wolves, Jean Craighead George’s 1973 Newbery Medal winner. Julie is an Eskimo girl who runs away from an untenable situation and ends up living in the wilderness with a wolf pack. I read the book back in the day and remember how much it made me think at the time – about life, cultural differences, human-animal relations. About nuance, and not-so-satisfying endings. But I hadn’t consciously thought of the book in years.
And then I thought about Libby, a character in my current WIP. Libby is a young woman who flees an abusive situation, lands in an unfamiliar cultural setting, and discovers she has a special relationship with wild animals. Have I unconsciously channeled Julie through Libby? Who knows? The story of Julie is more complex than my Libby’s story. And better written. And sadder. Now I want to reread Julie of the Wolves to see if it sheds some light on how I could deepen Libby’s story (without killing off Reed, of course!)
While I’ve been struggling to cram this blog post into readable form, my blogging buddy Darksculptures, coincidentally (well, maybe – some of us think there are no coincidences) posted her recent foray into young adult literature with Lois Lowry’s the giver. Go read her post: Sometimes the best thing a writer can do is shut up and listen to their kids. And read the giver.
Most of the books I’ve mentioned so far have been around for years. But I shelved so many interesting-looking new and new-ish books I’d never heard of, and wished I’d had the time to explore them, too. Or at least remember some titles, who wrote them.
Here in the land of there-are-no-coincidences, this week’s New York Times Sunday Book Review featured this article: The Kids’ Books Are All Right.
The author, Pamela Paul, wrote about her love for Y.A. fiction – and the KidLit book group she belongs to – it’s a pretty heady group that includes authors, editors, agents, and book critics who, as one of the members said, “take these books seriously.” Paul wrote about getting lost in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games while in the hospital, barely noticing whether her new baby ate or slept. And given what I read about The Hunger Games here, who could blame her?
And, oh joy, she mentioned some other must-read Y.A. authors as well: Susan Cooper. Eoin Colfer.
I know them!
They’re in the C’s – there, on the second shelf. With the really dark, really shiny book jackets.
You know you want to look inside. Right now.
Some of my blogging friends have shared interesting factoids about themselves this week, and I have thoroughly enjoyed reading 50 things or even 100 things about their lives.
I just can’t bring myself to join them, though. I’m not that interesting, and I like to fly under the radar a bit.
But I will share this: I shower outdoors. Every day. It’s summer and I live in the south, so that’s not such a big deal. Lots of houses near the ocean have outdoor showers so you can rinse the sand off after a day at the beach. But I shower outside every day of the year, unless it’s below freezing, snowing, or the middle of a thunderstorm.
My secluded backyard is my sanctuary. Carolina Jasmine tumbles over the shower surround, and the sun rises through the trees right outside the shower. Really, it’s a great way to start a January morning as well as a July one.
 Calm.
Peace.
Breathe in….breathe out….
Until a couple of days ago. I raise my face to feel the water, I open my eyes – and there, maybe three inches away, is a giant, hairy spider. Three inches from my face.
Golden orb spiders are common around here during the summer, and I appreciate their fine markings and their webs – from a distance. NOT from three inches away, especially when I’m naked, wet, and way too vulnerable.
In a heartbeat (although I believe mine had stopped) my private serenity is gone. And I have to …close …my …eyes to rinse the shampoo out of my hair. Yeow.
This is, possibly, the quickest shower I’ve ever taken. I think golden orbs are harmless, but I decide to do a little research just to make sure. Here’s what I learn:
According to Wikipedia, “The venom of the golden silk orb-weaver is potent but not lethal to humans.” Hmm…this is not exactly reassuring to me.
You know how it is with research: You start looking for one thing and find yourself getting sucked deeper into learning more than you ever wanted to know….
Oh, this is kind of cool: Golden orbs are known as “writing spiders” because of their intricate webs. I like that.
Uh oh: Female golden orbs eat their mates. (Sorry, guys.)
Their webs are as strong as Kevlar. And they stretch.
The following story is actually kind of creepy I think: apparently 70 people spent 4 years collecting webs from a million Madagascar golden orb spiders and wove the resulting web into a single piece of golden cloth, on exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. It was a real pain in the butt to gather all this spider silk because unlike silkworms, who can handle communal living, golden orb spiders tend to eat each other when they’re together and so the webs needed to be collected individually. I have no idea why or how anyone decided to do this project in the first place.
I’m glad I’m in North Carolina, because apparently Australia’s golden orb spiders are even bigger than ours. I’m not going to bother posting the links where you can watch videos of them tangling with sparrows and winning, but you know how to use Google and can find them yourselves if your prurient interest is piqued.
But for more — much more — than you could possibly ever want to know about golden orb spiders, I give you Natasha, the Golden Silk Spider. Really. Some guy named Frank, with an abiding interest in nature and a lot of spare time, followed a golden orb spider and her friends around his yard for months – and took LOTS of pictures, LOTS of videos and gathered them together on his own Natasha site.
How did Frank come to call his muse Natasha? “I went to a wonderful ballet (Zhazel probably in 1987) in Moscow (Bol’shoi) or St. Petersburg (Mali), and there was a Natasha, whose dancing was like fluid motion – and when I saw this spider, weaving with similar fluid motion, then it was clear, her name must be Natasha).”
::dusts off her dancing shoes and continues writing::
By now I know more than I ever wanted to know about golden orb spiders, except how to get the damn thing out of my shower without using force. Natasha-spider has more of a right to the outdoors than Natasha-writer, so I’m reluctant to play the human card. Plus, Buddha is sitting there watching. But not judging.
I want to take pictures, so I grab the camera and head for the shower, fully clothed in case I need to make a speedy retreat. I get as close as I can. Click. Click.
 I’m trying to get one more shot with the tape measure…. Closer, closer, and WHOP! The edge of the tape snags the web. Natasha-spider leaps forward; Natasha-writer leaps back and hits the edge of the shower surround.
I feel for furry legs in my hair and then, grateful, I see Natasha-spider on the ground below me. She must be pissed, though, because she storms off into the tangle of jasmine, leaving the remains of her web and, possibly, Mr. Natasha behind.
It’s been three or four days now, and I haven’t seen her again. Tiny Mr. Natasha is still cowering way up in the corner of the web and he doesn’t scare me. Yet.
Yesterday, a new spider shows up. This one is missing a leg.
Great. Now I have both Buddha and the ADA to contend with as I try to figure out how to get the spiders to move to another web and reclaim my shower.
So there you have it: one fact about Natasha-writer, and a host of factoids about Natasha-spider and her friends.
::dusts off her dancing shoes and flies back under the radar::
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Notable Quotable
"From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than ‘objectivity’.
I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble.”
-- Howard Zinn, 1922-2010
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Maybe we’ll get some rain. We’ll probably get some wind, but it’s still pretty wimpy out there. Honestly, I will be happier without tree limbs crashing down. And with the electricity staying on. I’m still a little spacy from the root canal I had this morning so I’ll probably go to bed early. A little bland and boring myself…
