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 This is in some ways an add-on to my post on Signs. I spent most of yesterday sitting in the emergency room with a friend and watching dozens of people’s life dramas play out under the blare of daytime television, reeking of second-hand cigarette smoke and old sweat. By the time I got home for good around 9 PM, I didn’t feel much like posting.
I’m plowing through The Truth About Fiction, which I posted a little about here. Most of the book is pretty basic, which is okay; it’s supposed to be for introductory creative writing classes — which is the ONLY way the publisher can get away with charging an arm and two legs for it, IMO.
I’m struggling with my boring old main character Becca, and I got to watch a lot of humanity yesterday. This line from the book jumped out and danced for me when I read it:
The choices the character makes should be irrevocable. If he can go back, where’s the tension?
Choices that don’t matter that much is why Becca is so boring, and and having made irrevocable choices is why so many people were hanging around the emergency room on a bright sunny day.
Thoughts?
Wow, talk about Signs. I’ve had a bunch of them in the last couple of days. First, my brother called and started talking about The Situation forty – forty! – years ago. I don’t want to get too far into it here, but I did something selfless back then to help my family. It radically and completely changed the entire trajectory of my life, and not necessarily for the better. (I’ll never know, will I?)
If my family had listened to even one word I’d said for the preceding eight years, The Situation wouldn’t have existed and who knows where I’d be now, but probably not Here.
And no one noticed what I did and what I lost (or possibly gained) by doing it, or acknowledged it, or even had the good grace to thank me for it.
Until my brother brought it up in a phone call yesterday. He had noticed, it turns out, and has felt bad for the past forty years that he couldn’t do anything to change the situation at the time.
Well. Ya think this is conjuring up a whole host of thoughts, memories, ‘what if’s’? My mind is in overdrive.
While noodling over this, I got a Facebook message from an old friend who remembered that thirty – thirty! – years ago I told her I’d wished I’d written the book Kinflicks.
Kinflicks? I can barely remember it, and I haven’t read anything by Lisa Alther since then, although that’s about to change. According to an Amazon review, it’s ‘a realistic warts-and-all view’ of coming of age in the ‘60’s. Since that could describe my life back in the day, fer sure I’ll catch up with it again.
The grand finale in the ‘What next?’ sweepstakes came this morning when I finally organized my office and put things into my new filing cabinet. I was putting something on the already-crammed bookshelf when a book fell to the floor.
Hmm… Steven Schoen’s The Truth About Fiction. I don’t remember buying it, let alone reading it, but there was a yellowed strip of newspaper holding my place, so I must have at least started it. I opened it to the bookmark. Ah, Chapter 4: Plot.
Here’s the first page of the chapter:
If you want to make yourself depressed, all you have to do is go to a library or one of the new superstore book vendors. Wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling books and magazines. Page after page of fiction. Obviously, everything that can be written already has been, right? What new is there left for you to do?
Take heart. The fact is, in the broad strokes, on all those pages, there are really only six plots.
First of all, there are only three basic conflicts:
a. A person at war with another person.
b. A person at war with his (sic) world.
c. A person at war with himself.
And there are only two outcomes: either the protagonist wins, or he loses.
3 possible conflicts X 2 possible endings = six plots.
Whaddya think?
I’ll let y’all know what I think of the Schoen book. I can already tell you that it’s 115 pages soaking wet and that Amazon.com is charging $44.40 for it new. Which makes me think it must be used as a text in college writing classes, where the cost of student textbooks is shameful. Which pisses me off, and is another reason I’m glad I’m not in academia full-time anymore.
So: Now I need to figure out how to connect all the dots life has presented me with in the last 48 hours. Stay tuned.
I always thought that left-handedness was supposed to be the mark of creativity and original thinking, as well as that illegible backward hand-writing.
So I looked into it a little. Alan Searleman, a psychology professor at St. Lawrence University did some tests and concluded there were more left-handed people with IQs over 140 than right-handed people. According to Searleman, “Left-handers have a higher ‘fluid’ intelligence and better vocabulary than the majority of the population. This is perhaps why there are more of them in creative professions, such as music, art and writing.”
Ya think?
Not according to Paul Satz, chief of the neuropsychology program at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute: “Being a leftie is not a marker for creativity. That’s sort of nonsense. Creative geniuses have been left-handed and right-handed. Lefties in the population have basically the same level of [thinking] skills as right-handed people. They also live as long. Being left-handed has nothing to do with it.”
(The above kind of stuff is why I’m glad I’m no longer in academia full-time.)
Turns out lots of famous people are lefties. Every U.S. president since Reagan except for Dubya is left-handed. Albert Einstein. Bart Simpson. Half of the Beatles (Ringo and Paul). M.C. Escher.
But not that many authors. Eudora Welty. Mark Twain. Dave Barry? So that brings me to the burning questions of the day:
Are lefties different than righties, and vice versa? If so, how?
Are you a leftie or a rightie?
Does it matter?
Please submit your answers in a blue examination booklet, using APA Style Sheet as your grammar and punctuation guide.
JUST KIDDING! But I am curious to know your answers. I’ll do it too. Thanks!
Senator Hagan was in town today. That’s me in the pink baseball cap (from the local TV news).
I’ll be back tomorrow.
A is helping me streamline and simplify my blog, so stay tuned for some improvements.
Namaste.
I finished yesterday’s post, published it and looked at it again — something felt Not. Quite. Right. I did a little research, and sure enough, cardinals eat nuts and seeds, NOT bugs. Shoulda known that from my bird feeder.
So I edited Ms. C’s invitation from “Let’s go eat some BUGS” to “Let’s go eat some SEEDS.”
Phew, much better.
And then I thought about it some: I spent actual real-time minutes researching whether a talking – hello? — wild songbird would eat bugs or seeds. I was aiming for authenticity in my dialogue. In billable hours it would have been only five bucks or so, but still.
That’s just plain nuts. If I were Ms. C chattering away in my front yard, I’d say, for sure, “Let’s go get some chocolate croissants and maybe a latte.”
Next time I’ll try for more authenticity, more true grit.
I know y’all are anxious to find out what’s happening with my kamikaze cardinal, so here’s the latest:
Whoops, wrong cardinals…. sorry.
This morning I walked down the driveway to get the paper and there in my palm trees (minus the snow, thank heaven) were not only the male cardinal, but a female cardinal as well. Phew. A couple of minutes later I saw them both in front of the garage window, where I overheard the following conversation:
Mr. C: …and then I fought him – bam bam bam – until I scared him out to kingdom come. (Cardinals = get it?)
Ms. C: Oh, you brave thing. Just look at your crumpled feathers from defending the territory for me!
Mr. C: Yeah, you shoulda seen the other guy. I just knocked him out of the park. (Cardinals = get it?)
Ms. C: You are my hero! Let’s go eat some seeds to celebrate and then gather a bunch of sticks for a love nest.
And they sailed off into the oak trees.
**
Obviously I am having difficulty working on my novel this morning.
I admit it: I’ve been a slacker lately. I’ve diddled and dawdled away my writing time and not had much to show for the last month or so. I’ve read alot, and that’s good, but my writing production has been pretty tiny.
But no more. Sunday A. and I were sitting at the kitchen table with coffee when I announced that, From This Day Forth, I would write at least 1500 words a day of my novel to try to get closer to the elusive target and my goal words: The End. As I said that, the sky — which had been sunny and cloudless — suddenly turned black. We looked at each other and laughed.
Was that a sign?
Dunno. Later I was reminded that Monday was the start of NaNoEdMo, cleverly dubbed by my writing buddy Kathan as ‘the ugly stepsister of NaNoWriMo.’ And that I had, in an earlier time zone, committed to NaNoEdMo since I, silly girl, thought I’d actually have a completed novel by March 1 to edit. And then spend 2 hours a day editing it.
No matter.
I’m not a fast writer, and only on rare days of sublime inspiration am I able to crank out 1500 words in 2 hours or less. So I figured I’ll just keep with my 1500 word goal set during the mid-day darkness. And if I get my 1500 words in less than 2 hours, I’ll keep going. (Please note there is nothing, nothing, about writing quality in my current goals.) Crank it out; crank it out.
So what’s that ‘bam bam bam’ against the side of the house? 
Sunday I walked through the garage and there at the window was a male cardinal, flinging himself against the window. He’d bounce off, dazed, land on the ground, pick himself up, and hurl himself against the window again. I chased him away, figuring that the presence of a Large Person would be enough to scare him away.
But no, a minute later he was back. We read that cardinals sometimes do this during mating season when they are establishing their own territory — they see their reflection in the glass and think it’s competition. They can bang against a window until they kill themselves. I guess the term ‘birdbrain’ came about for a reason.
A got the ladder and an old flannel sheet and draped it over the window. It looked ugly, but hey — we were saving a life here. We took it down late last night because the weather report called for heavy rain today, which would knock the sheet down anyway when it got soaked.
This morning I went to get the paper and as I walked through the garage, ‘bam bam bam!’ Poor thing was back and at it. I taped sheets of newspaper against the inside of the window and that seemed to do the trick.
I came upstairs to the kitchen. ‘Bam bam bam.’ This time he was throwing himself against the window in A’s office.
I’m wondering if there’s a cautionary lesson here. I’m hoping that my own writing efforts are better directed than the poor cardinal’s. But I don’t know. And so I’m just going to keep on keeping on. I hope it’s the right thing to do.
What do you think? Can I focus more productively? If so, how? I don’t want to keep slamming into a pane of glass.
Just. Keep. Writing.
bam bam bam
 Clint: A Retrospective is coming out next week.
Today’s Wall Street Journal provided the following Eastwood quote:
“When I was doing The Bridges of Madison County, I said to myself, ‘This romantic stuff is really tough. I can’t wait to get back to shooting and killing.’”
Gotta love him.
 I honestly thought it was Friday this morning, so I posted this, then hid it when I realized it was Thursday, then decided, who cares what day it is?
Just in case you were still worrying about poor Libby’s fate……
**
“Libby! Can you hear me?”
She opened her eyes. The sun was too bright; trees swam in and out of her line of vision.
Focus: try to focus. A sea of blue – Reed’s eyes looking into hers. Focus on that steady light; cling to it.
Fear, concern, relief washed across Reed’s face. Then Libby saw something else in his eyes and smiled.
Reed’s hands trembled as he touched her hair, her face, her lips.
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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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