writing in the water

The possibilities are endless. I could kill one of them. Make one crazy. Lose one. I already know I’m going to break some hearts. Such power! What to do with it?

Do you think God had this problem? There’s was God, sitting up in heaven, tapping his fingers on a cloud, stuck in the plot. “Let’s see, I’ve got this character wandering in the woods…hmmm, where’s the drama? What’s this character want? What this story needs is some conflict! Ooo. I know, I’ll make another character! They’ll fall in love! I like a good romance.”

Then came that pesky snake, always a critic, saying, “You sure you want to do that? I don’t know if I’m buying this. It’s a bit, you know, predictable.”

“Well, smarty skin, you write it if you think you’re so clever.”

So the snake writes himself into the storyline. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” said God. “Do you even understand what I’m trying to do? Don’t you get it? Now I’m going to have to start over!” Sipping his coffee (because, yes, there was coffee before the beginning of the world), God hemmed and hawed and said, “I know. Let’s get these characters out of this garden. Nothing ever happens there.”

And God cut and paste Eden into an entirely new document, and created this known earth. Naturally, God isn’t sure he didn’t make a mistake. Maybe he should’ve stayed with that original garden plot, but he doesn’t want to start all over again, and he’s got so many ideas…

So, we can see what a plot tangle God’s gotten into. Makes my plot mess seem, well, insignificant.

Perhaps one story changed your life. Saved your life. Revealed a secret. Or fooled you completely. Can you name them?

Plenty of books had me fooled.

Every book opened a door, an escape route, to girls I wanted to be and boys I wanted to know. Like many silly girls, I wanted a boy to love me like boys loved girls in books. I understood that lots of things were fantasy, everything, in fact, but that. Which was ridiculous considering the state of romance among the adults I knew.

When I was in the 6th grade, my father dropped my step-sister, N., and I off at the movie theater. It was our first time to go without a grownup, and N., to my dismay but not to my surprise, attracted two boys before we’d taken our seats. They were 10th graders and they had Shawn Cassidy hair and cowboy boots. One of the boys sat between us. The other sat on my left. I sat with my folded across my chest, my eyes glued to the screen, and my hatred for N. rising to new levels.

The boy to my left put his arm around me, and I pretended I didn’t notice. He talked, and I pretended I didn’t hear. He sighed deeply at the giggles coming from my step-sister. Tick, tick, went my anger, and I saw nothing of the movie.

At the end, N gave them our phone number, and she hit me when I dragged her away, pulled her to the curb, and pushed to the waiting car. “You don’t know them!” I said to her, before my dad opened the door. “They’re cute!” she replied. Maybe so, but they never did call. That N. didn’t notice they didn’t call, made me hate her even more.

I didn’t want a boy who thought he could put his arm around me without knowing my name or what book I had just read or that ice cream was my favorite food. Boys in books were worth making your father wait by the curb.

So there sat tiny badger on the edge of the laptop, tapping his tiny badger paw on his tiny badger chin, his tiny badger legs crossed, and his tiny badger nose twitching. What, he wondered out loud was he to do about all those distractions keeping you from writing your novel? Sure, the ankle nips worked wonders for a few, but still, too many would-be novelists were wasting precious writing time with online nonsense. “It has to stop!” he bellowed in his tiny voice.

This sort of thing gets tiny badger all fired up. He leapt to his feet and stomped his good foot (The left foot got snagged in a disc drive a few weeks back. Whatever you do, don’t mention the limp). “Oh,” he lamented, “if only I could be infinitesimal badger! I’d crawl though those computer wires and chew out your YouTube, your MySpace, your Facebook, your Solitaire, your Second Life, your whatever-you-don’t-admit-to, and then, and then!” He laughed maniacally, “You’d have to write because you’d have nothing else.”

Sadly, I pointed out that there were plenty of non online distractions–children, spouses, lovers, imaginary lovers, work, chores, hang nails. The list is long.

“NO!” Tiny badger ran to the edge of the desk and stared out over his domain. He stood tall, er, tiny, and proud, and he announced that the time had come. He had to take serious action before it was too late. He would become, (dum-de-de-dum-dum!) Super Tiny Badger. That’s right. Soon, soon, he warned, he would have his tiny badger cape and he would fly, fly, fly to all his badgerees and he would bite their ankles like they’ve never been bitten before. He would gnaw on ears while they slept. He would know no bounds!

Oh! He even whispered to me his ultimate plan…

He would lower the brightness of your computer screen to set the mood. Tiny badger would find the most provocative page you’ve written so far, and he would drape those words around himself, just so, and sprawl seductively across your laptop. You will not be able to refuse! You will coo and ah over him and then he’ll have you! And he will demand that you get on your knees (or in your chair) and you will write him a scene. A thrilling scene! A scene to make his hair stand on in. Yes! Who are you to refuse him?

Go! Write that scene that will leave him breathless and asking for more. “More words! More story! Please!” he will shout, clutching his tiny badger heart. “Don’t leave me this way!”

But you are smart, of course. You will not reveal everything in one go. You will leave tiny badger hanging from that wild, unpredictable, what-happens-next cliff, where he will be blissed out and unable to nip. And you’ll want to do it all over again.

Dad shot the alligator in the head by accident. Sort of.

I see Dad get out his bow and arrow. “Dad, whatcha doing?” I am 19 and home from college.

“I’m going to go scare the gator,” he says.

I follow him outside. “You’re going to scare the gator? Why?”

“That gator’s keeping the catfish away.” He walks purposefully down the driveway to the road.

“Dad. You think it’s wise to scare a wild animal?”

“That gator’s scaring away my catfish. He’s got to go to somebody else’s dock.”

“And you think an arrow will scare him away?” We stop at the end of the driveway while a semi rattles by. My dad is laughing. He gets this laugh whenever he knows he’s doing something that will make me crazy. “Dad,” I say, crossing the road with him. “You don’t have a license. The game warden will arrest you!” It’s a hot summer evening, and I’m sweating already.

“I’m not going to kill it. I’m going to scare it.” We walk down to the dock. “I’m not going to get into no trouble for scaring it.” He makes a face that tells me he thinks I’m overreacting. The sun is setting and the lake is red, orange, and pink.

“Dad! You’re going to be pointing an arrow at a gator! He’s not going to think–oh that guy’s just scaring the gator. I’ll just leave him to it.”

“Well, that gator doesn’t understand that he’s scaring my catfish. All the time I come down here to feed the catfish and that gator scaring them away. I tried to tell him.” Dad makes that laugh again. “But he won’t leave.” He shakes his head. “Gators think they own everything. Well, I got news for that gator–he’s gotta find catfish somewhere else.” We’re on the dock now. The water slaps the posts, which jerk slightly with our weight. I can’t walk beside him now, and I keep an eye on my feet to make sure I don’t catch my toes between the slats or step on any splintered wood.

“Dad, you can’t shoot a gator.”

He doesn’t look at me, but I can tell he’s happy. He’s going to scare the gator and drive me nuts. “Mahda, I’m not going to shoot it. I keep telling you. I’m going to scare it.”

Sure enough, the alligator is there, a few yards from the end to the dock. All we can see, of course, is that sliver of its head, and its not moving. “Dad, you’re not really going to do this, are you?”

He puts the yellow arrow to the bow.

“Dad. What’ll you do if you hit it?”

He laughs, and takes aim.

“Dad. You’re going to get–”

The arrow flies.

“Into trouble. Oh my God.”

The lemon yellow arrow stuck out from the gator’s head. “Dad. Look what you did!”

“That stupid gator’s got my arrow,” he says. “I should’ve tied a rope to it.”

When I left a week later, that gator still had that arrow in its head and my dad still couldn’t feed his catfish.

In fiction I try to make my characters argue over things that really mean something else. You shouldn’t try and scare a gator with a bow and arrow–why don’t you ever listen to me? I want to feed my catfish–why do you always think you can tell me what to do?

My mother lived with a professor of death and dying. Being in the eighth grade, I thought this incredibly cool. No one else I knew had a mother living in sin–and I told everyone about him. He drove a fiat, he had a house hidden behind a wall, he traveled the world, and he made me laugh.

At school I’d repeat his stories and try to tell them the exact same way, word for word, gesture for gesture, but I never got the kind of laughs he did.

He also punched holes in the wall. I lived with them for a short time, and some mornings I’d stumble down the hall, and see the plaster beat in. The first time I saw such a hole, I stared at it for while, wondering what had made him do it. I wondered if he’d hit anything else. My mother came down the hall and the only thing she said to me was, “He only hits the wall when he’s been drinking.” And she walked on to the kitchen. When I saw him, I didn’t ask about his swollen hand.

I didn’t tell anyone at school about the holes, although every now and then I’d say, “Well, he was in Vietnam, you know, and I think he has some bad memories about it.” I’d shrug. “No biggie. He’s really funny.”

I didn’t tell anyone about the Playboy magazines in the hall bathroom either. My mother used the master bathroom, and I didn’t know if she even knew about it, until one day, she looked up from a book and said, “You don’t look at that magazine in the bathroom, do you?”

“No,” I said. “I know better than that.”

But of course what 13 year old knows better than that at all? That magazine told me quite plainly that boys were never going to like me and perhaps I ought be to grateful they wouldn’t.

Finally, my mother decided to send me back to live with my dad. He’d divorced his second wife and life would be better there. That was all she said at the time. It is for the best. Years later I learned about the night the boyfriend didn’t punch a hole in the wall, but held a gun to her head while I slept peacefully in my room at the end of the hall. “If he had shot me,” she said, “you would’ve woken up.”

Children don’t say so many things, and characters don’t either.

How are you?
What did you do this weekend?
Did you get your homework done?
How was the movie?

Where in that do we say what we’re really thinking? And I admit I love doing this to characters. They ask one question to find out about what they aren’t actually asking. They answer what they don’t mean. Or they do answer and no one listens. Or they listen but they don’t understand. They say what they think is best. In fiction, of course, the child would wake up and wander into the room because sleeping through things doesn’t make the audience happy.

(Note to SBW–I’m trying really hard here not to flinch. Not entirely sure that is wise.)

I can’t read the next scene. The scene needs revision. But for whatever insane reason the next scene fills me with such dread my stomach churns and my nerves twist, and I look away. What the hell am I thinking? Why did I write something so upsetting, and is it really upsetting or am I just weird? It’s not like I don’t know the ending, but still…

When writing the first draft, I can write anything. Fly down the page and let the imagination run amok and feel happy about it. Revisions are a bit like believing you’re in the love affair of your life only to open your eyes one morning and realize you’ve hurtled yourself down to a circle of hell. What am I doing here? And why didn’t anyone stop me?

“Why is she such a sucker?” the professor asked the class. The graduate students looked at their notebooks, cleared their throats, or squinted as if the sun had hit them in the eyes. “To me,” he continued, tapping my paper on the table to even up the pages, “this paper says that she is an idiot. Don’t you think?”

If a spear had shot from his arm and pinned my heart to the wall behind me, I’d have been grateful. I’m still not sure why I didn’t cry, but I sat in my seat, avoided eye contact with everyone, and when the professor asked me if I thought the paper was any good, I managed to say no without squeaking. Sometimes shame can vibrate straight through your skin to your bones. That’s how it felt for me anyway, when I had to read that paper out loud to the class. After I finished reading to a very silent room I considered never speaking again.

Well, the paper was bad. Five minutes after handing it in, I knew I had screwed up, and I had five days to think about how I’d be punished in front of my better educated, older, more experienced classmates. At least I faired better than the woman who he called dippy.

Humiliation, this professor would say, is a great teacher. Hey, a baseball bat with nails might do the trick too. You certainly wouldn’t forget either lesson.

The girl opens the door to the basement and shines her flashlight down the stairs. Everyone watching knows she shouldn’t take those steps, but, of course, she does. Depending on your reason for watching, you either cover your eyes or lean forward and wait.

If the movie magic works, you believe she’d go down into the dark and you’d care what happens to her. But you’ve got to believe in the spell or you’ll do nothing more than get a snack or change the channel.

A 17-year-old boy lived next door to me when I was 15–next door being on the other side of an overgrown lot. We didn’t go to the same school and were not friends. He wore Izods and penny loafers. I wore earrings that hung to my shoulders and scarves. One evening I sat on our front porch to watch the sunset and read a book.

His hello startled me. I knew girls who would think him cute, but I was into Howard Jones, not Journey. I frowned, remembered to be polite, and smiled.

“I saw you were all by yourself and I thought you’d want company,” he said.

And I was alone. My father wouldn’t be home for four more hours. Our other neighbor wasn’t home either, and there were no adults in shouting distance. He sat next me on the bench. “Whatcha reading? You read a lot don’t you? I always see you with a book.”

I wasn’t aware he saw me at all, but here he was being friendly and who was I not to speak when spoken to? I realized I was supposed to be flattered that he had decided to trudge over a weed-filled lot talk to me, and I, raised to be polite and gracious til the end, obliged.

“Is your dad home?” he asked.

“No,” I said. Then I thought downright terrible thoughts about this clean-cut boy trying to be nice. “But he could be home any minute.” Then I scolded myself. He liked pretty girls and I was flattering myself.

“It’s hot out here,” he said. “How about if we go inside.”

I felt like the girl standing at the basement door, and I imagined a voice shout from an invisible audience. “Don’t do it!”

But I was no pretty actress in a movie and surely I was overreacting and being rude. He was, after all, just a neighbor. “Um, no. I like it our here.” My pulse hurried a bit. I was saying no, and I wasn’t used to it. What if he told his parents and they told my dad, and my dad would ask me, “Why were you rude to the neighbors?”

He smiled. “Come on. We can find something to do. Something fun.”

Well, I wasn’t pretty and I had a dirty mind, and surely there was nothing wrong with being inside. We could watch TV–there wasn’t much else to do. “No,” I said. “I’m happy out here.”

“But I’ve never been in your house before and we’re neighbors. You’ve been in mine.”

As a Libra I believed I was fair through and through. “Not today. Okay?”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Sure,” I said. “But I’m not allowed to let boys in the house.” This was a lie. Now I was rude and a liar.

“He won’t know.”

“Look, why can’t we just be out here?”

“You’re not very friendly are you?” he said, and then he left. I watched him cross the field, and I felt I’d been rude, but I also felt unsettled and unsure about what had happened. Why would a simple request needle my skin? I waited until he reached his own door, before I went inside.

In fiction, we must feel the tension. Will she go? We know that she shouldn’t, or probably shouldn’t, and we wonder if he is what he says he is? And in a story, he usually isn’t. Whose judgment do we trust?

In fiction, we get to find out. In real life, we often don’t. I don’t know if my neighbor was trying to be friendly–I only know he never came over again.

A computer screen between you and the rest of the world can make you brave and foolish. Access to the publish button is a bit like access to the big red button in the Oval Office–it is power. I remember that oddly startled and pleased and worried feeling I got the first time I published a post. I closed my eyes before clicking the touch pad of my laptop, and peered out through one eye at my words printed oh-so-nicely across the screen.

Like any good button it demands to be pushed. Haven’t you ever walked though a Best Buy-type store and hit the eject button on the CDs players? Okay, to truly date myself I must admit that I bought tape players according to how they ejected. Read what you want into that, but those tape players, stereo systems, or boom boxes that popped out tapes too fast, were not for me–didn’t care about the price or the brand. The machine’s reaction to my button pushing told me everything I cared to know.

Anyway. Buttons call us to push them whether we should or not. If you tell a room full of people that if they push the red button on the wall they will receive a horrible electric shock, somebody in that crowd will push it. I think this is what is missing from that famous experiment where people shocked other people even when they could hear their screams–some folks will push a button even if they are the one’s who will do the screaming. Certainly no self-respecting kid will walk by a button without seeing what it will do–kill grandma or deliver ice cream? Let’s see!

But we are not kids, right? I don’t know but I wonder if our children won’t one day look at us and say, “You published that? You told the world about it? What were you thinking?” Some of us may not even have to wait that long. Somebody you know might be able to say that tomorrow. What were you thinking?

Why will we publish stories about ourselves that we can barely talk to our best friends about, much less our spouses? I’ve tapped my fingernails on the keyboard and wondered if I have gone too far. Why share these? What does this cracking open of the soul do for us?

Well, I want to be a writer and a good writer tells the truth, even (and perhaps more so) in fiction. But I’ve got to start somewhere, and people seem to have a need to see light shined into scary places. This sort of thing is how my mother-in-law describes a book she thinks is good, “And it’s true!” She and I see true differently. My novels are true if even nothing in them ever happened.

I’m veering off course, I think. But there is that deceptively simple publish button that calls to me–come one, you know you want to!–and for a button that doesn’t actually eject anything, it certainly is satisfying.

Don’t you think?

In the 9th grade I won a poetry award. Two things about that night stand out. My father had bought me a new dress for the event and his girlfriend curled my hair. It was the first time they’d ever taken note of my appearance. Second, I’d written the winning poem on the phone with a friend, and so I felt like a cheat walking up on stage alone. I’ve scarcely written a poem since–or admitted to it anyway.

But I have won another award and because these days I do all my writing myself, I’ll do my best to leave the angst elsewhere (for later use).

Anyway, here’s the thing. Warrior Girl was kind enough to give me the Arte Y Pico Blog Award. But, okay, a wee bit of guilt creeps in because a few weeks back Sherri Blossoms gave me the same award, and I, being unable to figure out how to cut and paste the image here, thought I’d get around to keeping up my end of the bargain, but, obviously, didn’t. If I had, Warrior Girl might have given this award to someone other creative soul, but how was she to know?

But I am happy to be thought of–and this time to pass it along. Arte Y Pico, by the way, translates very roughly as Maximo..or The Best Art…over the top… or great and awesome job. Something like that. You get the idea.

The rules are (though do with them what works for you):
1. Pick five blogs that you consider deserves this award through creativity, design, interesting material, and also contributes to the blogging community.
2. Each award winner should link back to the person who gave the award (I’m fine with it if you don’t).
3. Each award given should link to the winning blog.
4. An Arte Y Pico link would be especially polite.

So of course there is the panic of who to choose and who that means you don’t choose. I like encouraging everyone, and if you’re expressing yourself, you deserve an award, but in an effort to follow the rules, here are five blogs that really do deserve some extra attention.

1. Mama of Letters. She writes, she takes beautiful photographs, and she supports her fellow bloggers. Go to her site and listen to her novel podcast (because she also has a lovely voice).

2. Simple Words I Understand. She seems to be taking a blogging break at the moment, but I hope this motivates her to start writing more. I enjoy her descriptions of the small moments in life. She has great timing, and ought to be read.

3. Grace Undressed. This one may strike some as an usual choice, perhaps, and some her posts are not for the faint-hearted. But that’s why she deserves an award–because she writes the truth and she writes it well.

4. Writer Reading. I’m not sure what Writer Reading thinks about awards and such, but I like what she has to say, and so go read.

5. Cane Picio. No writing here–real art. Stunning and graceful black and white drawings of a little dog. While Cane Picio is cute, the pictures are moving. Often pensive. I’m only sorry she took down the tiny animated Cane Picio pooping in the corner.

I hope I’m giving a compliment here and not bothering anyone. These are blogs worth reading, and if gets them more readers, then hurray. That’s enough.