Halloween -- costumes and meanings

Welcome to Halloween, the holiday that (at least in the US) has developed from Puritan horror to childhood candy splurge to adult party excuse. (Note: I am not talking about the pagan Samhain or the Mexican Day of the Dead -- these festivals should be acknowledged in their own right and not just as versions of US halloween.)

I grew up in the childhood candy splurge years, which held their own horrors -- rumors of needles and razor blades and poison slipped into candies -- mostly untrue -- led my mother to ban trick-or-treating by the time I was six. Instead, my family went out to eat in our Halloween costumes, which meant I celebrated the adult Halloween as a child, only without alcohol.

I actually love the adult Halloween, because it gives me the opportunity to dress in silly costumes now that I'm too old to trick-or-treat. I don't find this overly childish -- or any more childish than I was when I asked the Christmas Fairy in the Walnut Room at Marshall Fields to grant me a wish. After all, masquerade balls have existed since the 1500's in European culture, and no doubt in other cultures as well.  We must feel a need to be someone -- or something -- else, an alter-ego to the person we are.

Today I'm dressing as Lauren, a limited edition Beanie Baby cat, complete with tag and Comic Sans jingle:

I am Lauren,
I'm a cat.
There is nothing
wrong with that!


I often dress up as cats. I have dressed up as my cat Kitty; a playful cat with Richard as Responsible Cat Owner to collect pet goodies for the Humane Society, and now as a Beanie Baby.

The Writer as a Beanie Baby

I don't wear "sexy" costumes -- like sexy firemen, sexy cops, sexy robbers, sexy schoolgirls, sexy Little Red Riding Hood ... I have no problems with the fantasies running around in your heads -- or my head -- but sexual fantasies don't translate well to real life, and they translate even worse to Halloween costumes. These costumes happen to be cheap mass merchandise store purchases rather than quality cosplay costumes, and render sexy as "cheap and tawdry".  I once donned a cat-in-a-miniskirt-and-fishnet-tights costume just before sneaking out of a departmental Halloween party in grad school. (Casimir Ihe, if you're reading this, I remember you said, "Jesus Christ, what the Hell is THAT?!")

 There might be a reason for "sexy" costumes, though -- maybe today's sexual fantasies are yesterday's ghosts, spirits we are frightened of and try to control, to subdue. The erotic, after all, has been a frightening force since hunter-gathers shifted into agricultural, then feudal, then industrial society -- as long as paternity has been an issue, because Eros disrupts family lineage. The ancient Greeks, who came up with the word Eros, viewed erotic love as a force that led to insanity and tragedy. So some people find "safe" ways to play with Eros, by putting on costumes on Halloween that allow them to indulge sexiness without consequences. as some people find "safe" ways to play with Eros in real life by having fantasies of sexy firefighters (Nope, not my fantasy), or by dressing in fantasy tropes like red dresses and Lolicon cosplay.

Whatever your costume, Happy Halloween!

And NO, I am NOT a furry, nor do I have sexual fantasies involving cats.

To My Readers -- a virtual cup of coffee

All of us have excellent stories to tell.

The shortest story I've ever been told: "I was going to do my banking today. So I went to the bank, and it's on fire." 

The short story best relying on imagination: "Remember when there was a bounty on coyotes in Missouri? My mom hit one and threw it in the trunk to take to the sheriff. Too bad it wasn't dead." 

The best short story I played a role in: "I had a dream last night we were all late for the bank robbery. That was alright, though, because we were all zombies."

I collect other people's stories -- the one about a friend playing war games in a park, who runs into some woods to take a leak at the edge of a cliff, only to look down and find himself exposed above a two-lane highway. The one about the hunter attacked by a rabid deer and the one about the woman who shot a deer while sitting on the toilet. My grandmother Iverson's malapropisms and my great-great grandmother who could stop bleeding by the laying on of hands. Silly and clever and maladroit and mournful -- I hold stories for people. And holding stories makes me happier than almost anything (except coffee).

I know all of you have stories of all kinds. I would love to sit with each and every one of you (assuming none of you are slashers or stalkers) over a cup of coffee (or beverage of your choice) and find out who you are from your stories. 

I know this vision is against all the rules of the Internet, where we all read each others' Facebook posts without remarking, and half the posts are reposts anyhow. 

So, again, I'd like to hear your comments, and more importantly, hear your stories. (We'll have to imagine the coffee.)

Here's to you, readers!

The Beauty and the Desolation

I'm going to start this with the lyrics of a song that tears my heart out every time I hear it. Last night I lay in bed (with headphones on) listening and feeling haunted by the words. Thank you, Neil Young:

 There is a town in North Ontario
Dream comfort memory to spare
And in my mind I still need a place to go
All my changes were there

Blue, blue windows behind the stars
Yellow moon on the rise
Big birds flying across the sky
Throwing shadows on our eyes

Leave us
Helpless, helpless, helpless, helpless
Babe, can you hear me now?
The chains are locked and tied across the door
Baby, sing with me somehow [ ... ]


The plaintive song, highlighted by pedal steel guitar, flows like a slow dance tune played in a swept-out barn lit by hundreds of fireflies. It describes life in a relatively slow northern town in Ontario, where one can see the horizon and the sky for miles. So beautiful, but so lonely, like the mood of the singer. He can remember that gloriously desolate moment, but he can't return there for real, because it would not be the place he'd left.

The song is called "Helpless", and every time I hear it, my heart aches as if someone has cracked my ribs open and exposed my heart. I'm frozen in place, staring at that midnight sky with the stars, all the stars, and seemingly thousands of Canada geese in their v-shaped flight.

I think about my own childhood in a small town in Northern Illinois. I can only remember Marseilles (pronounced Mar - SALES, I'm afraid) in grey tones -- the slushy grey of winter afternoons as I stared out at the darkening sky waiting for my dad to come home. The sickly green-grey of oncoming tornado weather; the damp grey of slogging home from school in rainboots. The wispy grey of the secrets.

Like Mr. Young, I can't go home again.

More on Retreats and Mini-retreats

Every morning, I participate in my writing ritual --  I write this blog and try to get my writing goal done for the day (somewhere between 1000 and 2000 words unless I get to a difficult part). Early mornings are my time -- it's 6:20 AM Central Daylight Time and I've been up for an hour.

You also know that, every now and then, I need a writing retreat -- somewhere with a unique atmosphere, someplace that's a Place. Someplace that's preferably a short drive so that precious writing time isn't eaten away by driving time.

My favorite retreat: Starved Rock Lodge. Admittedly, one of its draws is that I grew up near there. However, being a national-park level log and shingle lodge hidden in a state park doesn't hurt, either. The Great Hall, with its varnished logs and towering ceilings and comfortable chairs and eclectic visitors, stimulates the imagination like little else. I will not be going home this Christmas, to my heartbreak, because in my opinion, Starved Rock Lodge is the epitome of Christmas -- for locals as well as for travelers, including the Jewish families from Chicagoland who have reunions there.

One of my other favorite retreats: The Elms Hotel and Spa in Excelsior Springs, MO. A massive stone-and-wood building in a neo-Tudor style on the outside, the inside harks back to the 1920's with parquetry floors and dark wood. It's not hard to imagine that it was the stopping place of gangsters and their molls from Kansas City. One time there, I happened to mention to our waitress that I was on a writers' retreat and she let Richard and I use an unused part of the restaurant, complete with a couch and a sleek black fireplace for ambiance. She also kept us supplied with coffee (thank you, Laura Sanders!) The bonus: Using the spa, for a massage and an afternoon in the Grotto, which features comfortable lounge chairs, a sauna, a steam room, a whirlpool, a steam shower, and an icy shower. Even if you can't afford the massage, the Grotto alone -- $25 a day -- works to help clear a writer's mind.

Sometimes my husband and I can't afford (timewise, money-wise, or both) a weekend retreat, so we take a day retreat rather than go to a cookie cutter corporate coffeehouse. One exception on corporate coffeehouses -- our local Starbucks is located in the campus library, a spacious and warm space which only needs a fireplace to be perfect in its atmosphere. "Meet me at Starbucks" may be the most welcoming phrase you'd hear on campus, and I hold my Friday office hours there. But because it's so familiar, I don't use it for a serious "get in the writing mood" space.

Today, we're travelling 45 miles to a writing space in St. Joe, Missouri. There are two coffeehouses in St. Joe, and although neither of them are Starbucks, one of them works better as a writing space than the other. Hazel's, the one I don't take writing mini-retreats at, has good coffee, but has the ambiance of the gift shop at a Cracker Barrel -- lots of gifts for sale scattered across shelves and surfaces -- lots of visual stimulation I can do without. The other coffeehouse -- Mokaska -- is closer to downtown, and has a spacious and old-building look to it: high punched-tin ceilings, exposed ductwork and scaffolding for lights, and old woodwork at the counter. We're going to Mokaska.

Would it be cheaper to have a writing retreat in the home? Yes, but we don't really have a good room for it. There's the dining room, which has the ambiance of the Christmas tree we never took down, but the 20's era dining table proves to be awkward to use a laptop on. There's the spare bedroom of our circa 1919 home, but it's long and narrow and full of bookshelves and Richard's Star Trek ship collection, so the ambiance it provides could best be called "claustrophobic". My normal writing place is on the couch in the living room with my laptop and a computer desk. All fine and good, unless I need a change of scenery, and then I retreat.

Have a happy Saturday (Friday? Sunday?) all!

Delusion

I look in the mirror and I don't recognize that person. In my mind, I am a plump witch sitting in the corner of a room that glows with a crackling fireplace, peering over my glasses at you. I am a waif with huge eyes and fairy wings. I stand on the edge of a cliff, my hair streaming behind me in a storm. In my mind, I am never, ever ordinary.

And then I look in the mirror again, and damn it, I see a round woman with hair that curls into a grandma perm without any effort. I see bookish glasses, a tight mouth that turns into too, too much when I smile. A face to be forgotten, like those of a vanguard of women my age.

Do you blame me for preferring fantasy? Do you ridicule me for wanting to be the protagonist of my own life? Do you scorn me for standing here smelling roses and taking up the space a younger, more beautiful woman could be standing in?

Don't tell me about it. I prefer my delusion.

Words

Sometimes
words weigh heavily upon my shoulders,
and a touch on my elbow prickles for half an hour.

I'm never "fine",
but swimming in a torrent of words
about my pursuit of one crystal accomplishment.

Sometimes,
I feel my words
fall to the ground without being heard.

Word Sprints

Word sprints help you write fast, hence the name. They may or may not have a prompt to help you with a topic to write on. They can be timed (10 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour); they can be word counts (100, 200, 1000 words); they can be housed on Twitter (NaNo Word Sprints), done in groups or individually, and can even take the form of competitions.

The whole purpose of word sprints is, like NaNoWriMo, to get your words on paper. You can edit later. I may be using more word sprints this year because I'm not having as many conversations with my characters as I usually do. (I need a good amount of time at a coffeehouse this weekend with Richard to help flesh out plot and character.)

Not everyone believes in the common philosophy behind NaNo and writing sprints -- that is, that the words need to get put on paper, in whatever form, before you can polish your work into a novel. This columnist is very much against NaNo, thinking it gives less talented people a license to make their friends read their bad work. (I would have welcomed her point of view had she not come off as a caustic snob who likes to piss on others' dreams).
************

Here's the result of a ten-minute word sprint for my WIP, with the prompt of "Someone is getting thirsty":


The next day I’d wished I’d stayed at the curious place where I had dropped off the stranger the night before. The air shimmered with the heat; I sweated until I couldn’t sweat more. My goal was to drive out of Owayee and back toward the larger highways, because everything in this heatbox looked the same — the short scrubby shrubs, the baked-mud ground pebbled with rocks of varying size, the lack of true greens and flowers. Was it simply going back the way I came? Even with a map, I wasn’t quite sure what highway I looked at. 

There was a lake by where I’d dropped off the affable, enigmatic Daniel. If I could get back to the lake, I would be near water and could take shelter with the commune. They had offered me shelter, but I wanted to continue on my quest. 

Of course, my compass, I thought, and grabbed it from the passenger’s seat with one hand. Of course, as luck would have it, the compass couldn’t recognize true north. I thought the commune had been true north from where I was on the road. 

I drank the last dregs of water from my jug, remembering that I’d filled two five-gallon water bags from the commune’s reservoir. They had been generous. Mari, the leader, had smiled at me and said, “We have plenty more where that came from, Annie.” I felt like crying as the nausea hit me. Then I felt the truck shimmy as my front right tire ripped from the rim.

***********

Is this a first draft? Yes. Upon reexamining it, I know it's going to take some more filling in, and some wordsmithing. I use "of course" two times consecutively to start sentences. I don't like "true greens and flowers" as a phrase, exactly, because it brings to mind lettuces rather than vibrant green hues. "There was a lake" should read "I recalled there was a lake". Her recall of the commune could be slightly more descriptive.

But that was 25 words a minute on something I hadn't thought about five minutes before.

I'm okay with that.

NaNos -- your first draft (with footnotes!)

Dear NaNos (and other readers):

The first draft is not the time to polish your manuscript, or second-guess your ideas or get judgy* about your writing. You can do that later, after you've gotten 50,000 or so words on the page**. The first draft is the place to get your ideas on the page -- whether that is fleshing out an outline (planner) or channeling creative spirit without constraint (pantser***).

You will be tempted to thoroughly read what you write. Don't do so -- keep writing the words. Keep letting the ideas flow. Don't censor yourself when you write at first draft point -- welcome the plot absurdities and scenery-chewing, the mystical subways and talking trees****. You have plenty of time later to decide whether to keep them or not*****.

The 50,000 word first draft is not to make you a novelist. It's to make your future as a novelist possible through helping you break through the psychological barrier that makes you think you're not a novelist******.

So go for it! It might change your life!*******

**********************
Footnotes:

* although colloquial, I like this word better than "judgmental" simply because of the sound of it.

** this is not actually the length most novels should be for the market. It is, however, the winning number of words for NaNoWriMo.

*** as in "flying by the seat of your pants".

**** oops, I'm the one with the mystical subways, not you. You know what I mean, though.

***** hint: If they detract from the plot and character, get rid of them.

****** NaNoWriMo has loopholes one can exploit if one doesn't want to write a novel. There's all sorts of other projects one can undertake -- a script, an autobiography, historical fiction ...

******* or maybe not. But it's worth trying.

P.S.: The autumn and the faun

 I live at the border between this prosaic world and others of thundering dark and seafoam and terra cotta, the worlds that enchant. I myself am not an enchantment, not the conjurer of wild visions in violet and silvery green and the wispy white of silken web. I am forever in exile from that world, being only a scholar with words.

In the spring, I met a faun, slender and pale as cream, freckled and innocent as a wild beast. Homely as only gingers can be, long-faced and jug-eared under his masses of hair. I asked him for a story.  I had forgotten -- nobody can catch a faun in stillness very long. He smiled at me and ran off, no words spoken.

All summer, I played hide and seek with the faun. I would not tame the beast, because one can only live at the edges of those other worlds if one does not try to own them. I just wanted to hear his story, find the source of his fleeting magic. Fauns do not speak -- they smile, and then disappear. I will never learn if that smile was meant for me, and the thought of that makes me feel sad, like I do when I get to the end of a book.

Now it is autumn, and I sense he is strolling across a filmy border to where he belongs. I will write in my warm house with chilly sunlight streaming through the window, where I belong. I will never know what words he would have for me. But I have seen him.

Old Hat

I'm not as excited about participating in NaNoWriMo, or that international month of writing 50,000 words toward a novel,  as I need to be.

I'm not sure why. It might be because this is my fourth NaNo, or because I didn't succeed last year, or because I've succeeded two years before that. It could be because there aren't others in my area to have writing sessions with, or because I've discovered that the officially sanctioned NaNo group events seem more about cliquishness than encouragement, or because I suspect I wouldn't notice it was cliquishness if I were part of the clique (which embarrasses me).

Things are so much more motivating when they're shiny and new, aren't they?

I need to fall in love with my ideas:

Anna Schmidt/Annie Smith, an anthropologist, embarks on a quest to find the origin of a post-Fall fairy tale in the ruins of the United States.  She senses the ghosts of a traumatic incident following her as she pursues her quixotic journey through a world of black-market economies, scrapyard ingenuities, border skirmishes, and attempts at law and order.

In the high desert of Owayee, Anna meets Daniel in the nick of time, and he takes her to his home, an underground communal enclave. She suspects she has discovered the people of her fairy tale, who are in fact real but more unusual than she had guessed.  Then her secrets are revealed to the commune, some of which not even she knew. Revealed also is a plot that could cause widespread deaths -- and Anna and members of the commune must stop Free White State from accessing a super-lethal virus Anna's stepfather, a cryptographer, had once locked up.


I need to get a better feel for the characters, perhaps through more interrogation, or through writing a fun part of the story.

Melancholy October

The clock on my computer reads 6 AM, and there's no sign of light through the window.  The first day of autumn was a month ago, and the leaves of the trees I cannot see in the opaqueness of pre-dawn have shifted to brilliant russet and orange and yellow.

Fall breaks my heart, the way it wrings out the greatest beauty of the leaves before they die and blow away in spicy, earthy drifts. The rustle of leaf piles, the days and nights of rain from delicate sprinkles to sibilant showers to pounding gullywashers speak the truth of autumn, that it's all about the last hurrah before the earth sleeps through the winter.

Flocks of starlings, like sooty leaves tumbled in a wind, wheel across the sky in everchanging patterns -- billows grown big, then small; gathering for their migration south. The unprepossessing slate-colored juncos in their grey and white move in and outnumber the year-round drab sparrows. The cardinals stay through the winter, flashing red against the snow; seeing one seems like a promise that summer will come.

It is time to tuck away my summer fancies for those things that stay, that last through the winter. I will invite those friends to my hearth to drink hot chocolate and tell stories; I will welcome them as my own.

Love languages and your characters.

According to The Five Love Languages (Chapman 1995), we predominantly express and perceive love in one of five ways:

• gift giving
• quality time
• words of affirmation
• acts of service (devotion)
• intimacy. 

Now keep in mind that there are many different kinds of love -- the ancient Greeks, who remain the experts in categorizing types of love, named:

• agape, or love for the world
• ludus, or playful love (this word has the same root as "ludicrous")
• phila, or deep friendship (this word has the same root as "Philadelphia")
• eros, or sexual/sensual love
• pragma, or longstanding love (this word has the same root as "pragmatic")
• philautia, or love of self.

Because there are different types of love, we can apply the love languages to any significant relationships, from friendships (phila) to old couples (pragma) to passionate lovers (eros) to mutual crushes (ludus). These Greek labels describe types of love, but not how they're expressed.

Each of these types of love could be expressed in one of the five love languages. In reality, we may use more than one love language, but not be fluent in all five, which causes relationship problems when the other person speaks different love languages. This can cause conflict -- both in terms of real life and in terms of a story.

For example, you could have a character whose main love language was acts of service, so he thought he was saying "I love you" when he made the bed in the morning. His spouse, on the other hand, expected words of devotion, and thought his making the bed was just performing the daily chores. Both felt unloved as a result, until they got into an argument:

"What do you mean, you make the bed because you love me? That's something you're supposed to be doing! Are you telling me you see me cooking dinner as a sign of devotion toward you?" she screeched.

"Well, yes," he snapped.

"You gotta be shitting me."

(Ah, the miracle of love!)

Many romance novels depend on this misunderstanding trope, whether or not the writers are unaware of love languages. The man is silent and devoted to protecting the woman (but does limited service in other areas such as housework), and expresses himself with acts of devotion and intimacy (sexual only, as emotional intimacy seems lost on the strong, silent type).  The woman misinterprets this as "he only wants to have sex" at the same time she's irresistibly drawn to the sex. The man, because of his devotional love language, marries the woman to protect her from anything from unwed pregnancy to eviction, and the woman interprets this as duty because the man won't actually admit he loves her, apparently because he believes that uttering words of affirmation before the last chapter will unman him. 

So a word to the wise: understand your characters' love languages. Understand your friends' love languages. Watch what they do, watch what they encourage you to do. Don't expect them to understand your language; learn theirs.

Chapman, G. (1995). The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Committment to your Mate. Northfield Publishing. 

New toy

I was lucky enough to have a professor in college who heavily encouraged me to learn to compose assignments directly on the computer instead of hand-writing and transcribing. As I am one of those people whose train of thought breaks down the moment I put an awkward black scribble mark on a pristine piece of paper, I welcomed this suggestion. Thirty years later, I'm one of the few writers out there, I hear, that prefer to compose on the computer.

The problem with computers and their iPhone companions is that they're inconvenient when waking up and trying to jot down a dream. I have trouble with high tech before coffee. Big electronics are also awkward when I'm in a coffeehouse with Richard discussing sheer ideas, the ones that will flitter away by the time we get into the car.

On the other hand, I also have grown to hate transcribing handwritten notes into my computer or iPhone companion. It's one of those things that I like to put off till later, with "later" meaning "when the piece of paper is lost or thrown in the garbage".

I decided I needed to have something to take notes on so I could take story notes on the road and by my bed  -- to capture those dreams, you know.  I'd had a student recommend smart pen technology years ago, at about that time my students realized I was as forgetful as they were, but smart pen technology is expensive, although not nearly as expensive as an iPhone X.

So there I was, contemplating a smart pen. Not without qualms -- part of me quailed at the thought of having such a bougeois consumer electronic product. On the other hand, I had a boatload of store credit at Barnes and Noble as the result of a class-action lawsuit of some sort, and those points would expire soon. I can't read 20+ books in that short a time.

With my purchase justified and paid for, I bought my smartpen. (I will not tell you which brand, because this is not an advertisement.)


The smart pen technology involves two parts, a special pen and special paper.The pen reads infrared (so make sure it's charged and press heavy on the pen) and the paper allows it to:

1) Pick up what you're writing and upload it to the smartphone :

2) Edit, transcribe, replay pen strokes, and share the picture:










3) Copy and paste the transcribed version into another document -- I've gotten much better on making the pen recognize my handwriting:

















So we will see if this helps me with recording more spontaneous ideas over coffee or during naps!

Kittens and kittens and kittens and kittens ...

My writing has been heavy lately, as I brood about the state of the world -- bigotry and prejudice, hatred, banal acts of evil, etc.
It's time to talk about kittens again.
My husband needs to publish his first book. In this book, Augustus T. Cat helps his friend Mr. Snail realize his goal to run a marathon.

To the left is Augustus T. Cat, who I found under a truck chassis and gave to the Humane Society. Augustus is very practical and concrete in his thinking, as befitting a cat in a tuxedo.








To the right is is Mr. Snail. He's an imaginary critter. He talks very slowly, and has many daring adventures. He has ADHD, and when he drinks coffee, he falls asleep and falls off the side of the cup.



Kittens aren't just for kid's books anymore, nor are they just fluffy and cute anymore. Sure, they're fluffy and cute, but they can also add to the theme and even the plot.

Exhibit 1. It is suggested you enlarge this, so you can see the utter adorableness that is the kitten Keanu.






















Exhibit 2: This cat got her own award-winning documentary: Review: Lil Bub and Friendz (Full disclosure: this is not my cat. However, I have met her and I can attest to the fact that she has an unworldly aura about her that might prove that she's an alien space cat come to Earth to save the world one cat fan at a time.)


*********

In one of my novels, a kitten with Cerebellar Hypoplasia teaches a life lesson to the protagonist* :

Meeting Jeanne and her father at the top of the stairs, the ginger and white kitten walked with a peculiar stiff-legged and wobbly gait, weaving and occasionally tipping over.

“Isn’t he cute?” Dad asked Jeanne, following her into the oppressively floral nieces’ room.  The wobbly kitten followed them.

“He’s drunk, Dad,” Jeanne commented as the kitten attacked her hand and then unceremoniously fell over. Undaunted, the kitten shifted itself under her hand and gnawed on her fingers. Jeanne pulled her hand back. “Ow! Not too hard, kitten!” The little creature stopped in mid-chomp and began to lick her finger while grabbing it with two little paws.

“He’s not drunk. Poor little guy has something called cerebellar hypoplasia. It means his motor skills aren’t very good, but he’s otherwise very healthy and happy. I named him Weebles.”“Because he wobbles and doesn’t fall down, right?” 

Jeanne recalled a television commercial from her childhood. “But he does fall down.” 

Weebles demonstrated by running three steps forward and tipping over, then cleaning himself as if he meant to fall over. “He gets right back up, though, and that’s the important thing.”

“Dad, he’s not getting up. He’s now fighting with an invisible feather. Is this kitten not very bright or something?” Jeanne looked at her father with consternation. “Dad, you’re what? Seventy-eight?”

“Yes. Why?” Jeanne should have been warned off by the questioning tone of her father’s voice.

“This kitten is – it’s a kitten. And you and mom could go into assisted living or even a nursing home at any time. What’s going to happen to Weebles here if you go into a nursing home?”

“Daughter.” Jeanne heard the steel in her father’s voice, as effective as another man’s shouting. “If I had not adopted this kitten, it would be dead by now. You can’t expect your mother and I to live our lives as if we might check out tomorrow. If we go into a home and they don’t allow us our pet, we will find someone to care for this kitten.  It might even be you for all I know; you need something in your life to give you a sense of perspective. You can’t expect us to sit around and wait to die; life goes on and none of us know how much time we have left so we might as well love little kittens.” 

 Dad stood up slowly from the twin bed where he had been sitting and walked out of the room. Weebles stumbled up to her hand, stood still, and tipped over, purring.

*********

If you want to know what Weebles looks like, here is my new kitten Charlie, who does not have Cerebellar Hypoplasia, but otherwise bears an uncanny resemblance (the cat, not my husband):

*In a way, I cringe at including my writing in the same essay as Lil Bub and Keanu. I feel like I've just said, "And look! My example is just as magificent as this Tribeca Film Festival winner!' Oh, well.

Homecoming Day

This is a song I wrote about 20 years ago; I can't write music; I just sing the tune. This was written years after "Empty Gym" but about the same incident, and it is written from the point of view of an older person to an innocent high schooler who doesn't know how bad things can get:

#1
Chicken wire and crepe paper
wrapped around a hayrack
towed behind a pickup
in the Homecoming parade
in a town as small as this one,
maybe smaller,
but that was so long ago,
my distant past,
my childhood a charade

Chorus: (2x)
I had a dream last night
you turned around and asked me why
I wasn't coming home again --
I couldn't tell you.

#2
Traps set in the corners
of the hallway in the high school
Memories like tigers
crouched and ready there to spring
Always tried my best to be invisible
but that was impossible --
a waste of time,
a waste of everything

Chorus

#3
Tried to tell the people
with their eyes glued to the TV set
to look at something else
outside the color of their hate
I was just a child then,
but I wasn't --
I couldn't be --
you can't go back and change my fate.

Chorus and fade...

Homecoming

I suspect Homecoming, as conducted in high schools and colleges across the US in conjunction with (American) football, is the remainder of ancient pagan fall rituals.

There's the sense of nostalgia as graduates young and old come back to their alma mater to celebrate their ties to the land as the leaves fall. Two teams vie for the win in a sport than can be barbaric and bloody.  The school crowns a King and Queen, and they preside over the festivities, which include parades and bonfires.

The old year passes, the god is sacrificed in a ritual game, and people celebrate their belongingness to their culture, then drive back home to their new lives, oddly satisfied.

It's the only way I can understand Homecoming. I took Homecoming for granted until, in high school, I had a conversation with a foreign exchange student named Armin (if you're reading, Hi Armin!):

"What is this Homecoming?" Armin asked as he searched his preternaturally neat locker for a book.
"Well, it's a football game." I rummaged through my less than neat locker.
"Soccer?"
"Football, not soccer. Anyhow, there's a game, and a king and queen, and we build floats for the parade --"
"Floats are -- ?" Armin scrunched up his freckled face.
"Well, you put chicken wire on a hayrack, and then --"
"Hayrack?"

I'm not sure if Armin ever understood, and I've been trying to understand Homecoming ever since. As I said before, I can only understand it as the vestiges of a fall pagan ritual. Most of our beloved holidays carry the remnants of the cultures before us, the religions before us, the beliefs of ancient peoples huddling against storms and hoping the crops were enough to feed them. And still, they comfort us against uncertainty today.

PS: For those prepping for NaNo, and for my friends: The Voice of Doubt

This week's NaNo prep email says:

     This week, figure out what you think your main obstacle to NaNoWriMo success will be. Once           you've identified the obstacle, come up with a three-bullet-point plan to overcome that hump.

My main obstacle is myself -- or, more specifically, The Voice of Doubt.

I suspect there are many Voices of Doubt out there.

Maybe your Voice of Doubt says, "You can't possibly write 50,000 words in a month" because you never have before.  You will -- if not now, someday. Just keep the good work up.

Maybe your Voice of Doubt says, "This stuff you're writing is garbage." It's a first draft -- it exists to get the shape of the novel out on paper. You'll refine it later in edits.

Maybe your Voice of Doubt says, "Your plot is so stupid." I have one word for you: Sharknado. Feel better?

My Voice of Doubt says, "Why bother? You'll never get published." Every day, I get better and better, closer and closer.

What is your Voice of Doubt? Take away some of its power and make it merely a voice of doubt. Contradict it, or agree with it and turn it around: "Maybe I haven't had a novel published yet, but I've had several academic journals published, and I've published a couple personal essays in liberal religious journals. And I have 28 readers on my blog!"

 (And I still want to know who you are!)

Interrogating the Dream Revisited: The Story of Inanimate Objects.

I've talked about "interrogating" before -- a way to understand characters by asking open-ended questions. In that sense, it's not truly "interrogating" in the sense of bright lights shining in a captive's eyes while the interrogator wields a rubber hose.  Open-ended questions (or open questions) help pull a chaaracter's story from your imagination.

But what about inanimate objects in your dream, or in your subconscious? Gestalt therapy, pioneered by Jung -- every writer's favorite psychologist -- suggests that, in interpreting a dream, one must tell the story from every significant object in the dream. Yes, it seems ludicrous to write, "Hello, I'm a footstool. People put their feet on me," but for a dream, that inquiry provides more insight into the subconscious pressures in your mind -- objects become symbols, shorthand for meaning.

For the purpose of writing, you're not limited to interrogating dream elements. Just as you can interrogate (ask open-ended questions about) your characters, you can interrogate objects you want to put in your story as well, to see if they further the plot or the symbolism or the scene. In terms of Chekhov's Gun (the object you introduce early to use later), it's good to know why a gun and not a knife, what kind of gun, who owns the gun, etc. Make your important objects count -- not only as functions, but as deliberate items carrying the weight of the mood, the provenance, the scene, the sentimental meaning.

*******

This is a segment from Gaia's Hands, where Josh has a dream which speaks of his subconscious knowledge of his girlfriend Jeanne's inner turmoil:

     He and Jeanne stood on a small wooden stage; he wore his gi pants and hakama, but no shirt.               Jeanne wore a white nightgown with a high neck, yet the glaring light shone through it, betraying       her shape. A folding chair stood on stage, his iaito leaning against it. The chair and sword stood           between them, casting shadows.  He walked around to her and tried to touch her, but she turned           and ran. Tripping, she fell to the floor and curled into a fetal position. When he reached her, the           lights went out. “It’s my darkness,” she shrieked. The iaito began to glow like a lightning bolt.



The iaito -- the proper name for the type of sword we call a "cheap samurai sword", was described earlier.  Here is the interrogation:

Me: You're an iaito, correct? (Yes, I started with a closed-ended question which can only be answered yes or no. This is because I wanted to make sure I was talking to an iaito, and not a wooden bokken :)

iaito: Yes, you are correct.

Me: Tell me about your history.

iaito: I have pretty humble origins. I was mass-produced in China, even though I am a Japanese sword, and made to look aggressively Asian. My blade is aluminum, and can neither hold an edge nor cut grass, much less humans. I suppose you could bludgeon someone to death with my blade. I have function, though, if only to hang on someone's wall as a symbol of what they aspire to. Some people aspire to flashy combat, some to fighting prowess -- my owner, a pacifist, aspires to balance his dual nature.

Me: Tell me about your owner's dual nature.

iaito: Josh has a temper, which he claims comes from his mother. From what I've overheard, his father is the origin of the other side of his nature, which is calm and harmonious. Josh wishes not to abolish his temper, but to channel it, which he does through martial arts. I represent both power and beauty -- Josh sees me as a reflection of himself.

Me: Could you explain representing power and beauty for me?

iaito: I am just a sword; people define my symbolism.

Me: Explain your phallic symbolism.

iaito: Uhhhh....

*******
In the book, the iaito manifests several times -- the first time, Josh hands Jeanne the iaito to examine while they're alone for the second time in his apartment. The first time in that apartment, they had sex and she pulled back from him. She says she doesn't trust herself with it (phallic symbolism?)

Then the phallic symbolism accidentally gets exposed when Josh's best friend Eric asks, "Jeanne, has Josh shown you his sword?"

When Josh leaves for the summer, he leaves the sword with Jeanne so she feels his presence when he's gone, so its importance changes from phallic symbol to representation of Josh.

Josh's dream happens over the summer, and the nature of the dream resolves eventually to Jeanne's long-hidden sexual trauma, so the iaito reflects both Josh's dual nature and Josh's sexuality.

Nice destiny for a cheap samurai sword that Josh bought at an import shop.

PS: Words and words

Every word has a butterfly’s weight;

The world rests on that butterfly’s wing.

Everyone speaks half their words;

The words they choose drift into void.

Everything you haven’t said

Could be the truth to tear the sky.

Me Too

My books were in the empty gym.
I had to retrieve them --
I couldn't just leave them.
I slid back the door.
The sound of dark and silent
sang back to me,
and chilled me to the core.
I asked the darkness
if anyone was home;
there was no answer save the echoes.
I wanted to shout,
let my voice ring above the rafters
in mighty trumpet tones!
I grabbed my books and scuttled out,
alone.

********
I wrote this my freshman year in high school; a year after an event that left a hole in my memory for ten years. This poem is about the hole in my memory, and about PTSD.

Cross-training in creativity

I have been quiet lately, as I've warned, because I've just finished one of the most rewarding events of my year: Missouri Hope, the major Emergency and Disaster Management training where I live. As I've said before, I'm the moulage coordinator, which means I supervise a half-dozen people in making our roleplayers look suitably injured. I also moulage, usually the most complex injuries -- although this year, my crew did me proud by simulating impalements, open fractures, and eviscerations on their own.

I’ve been thinking about cross-training. Cross-training is the practice of incorporating physical exercise in areas other than one’s primary sport or exercise regimen. It’s incorporating cardio with weightlifting or walking with running. Without cross-training, one set of muscles can overdevelop while another set weakens, destroying stride, balance, and strength.

Do writers need to cross-train? I think so, especially when suffering from writers' block. There are many creative arts, some soothing, some complex, some simple. I would suggest activities that have a little bit of challenge so as not to be boring, while providing a sense of mastery, because these activities add an important quality to your life -- that of flow, a type of active meditation.

I don't want to put journaling in here, because that exercises the same muscles. But how about knitting or crocheting, fingerpainting, sketching, sidewalk chalking, dancing, karate, crafts, mask-making, improv, or -- or moulage? :)

Feedback and Creativity

This is a quick entry before I go off to make volunteers look like victims:


Last night at the Missouri Hope (disaster exercise) training, we discussed the model of learning we use in the exercise: Put the team into an unique and overwhelming situation, step aside to see how they handle it, and advise when they get stuck.

The key, however, is that how you give the feedback is vitally important, because insensitive feedback can create problems in the disaster scenario and, worse, hinder learning and the willingness to develop further.

For example, "You could do better" is content-free, offering a judgement without supplying any advice.

Obviously, "That was a stupid thing to do" merely insults the learner and suggests they may as well not try again.

"That was good, but ..." People ignore everything before the word "but", so it sounds much like #1 above.

"Don't do that?" Just don't do that.

Good critiques inform the client factually of corrective actions. "It would work better here if you would ..." or "Think about ..."

The training session had me reminiscing to that moment in my college poetry class where I quit being creative for many years: The time my poetry professor called one of my poems "greeting-card trash".  Now that I'm older, I realize that not even professors are infallible, and many are just plain mean and ugly. But at age 20, I took it so hard that I didn't let anyone read my work for years.

I still wrote, but in hiding, only lsharin my stuff in that brief stint as singer-songwriter (until I divorced my guitarist). I had lost the joy of creating, and I started my career as a professor with very little balance. I had become half of myself.

It took marrying Richard, I think, to bring me back to my creative self. The strange thing is that Richard is an aspiring writer, but doesn't think he's creative. He is; just not as flamboyant as I am. He loves being silly, and I think he should write children's chapbooks with illustrations for the rest of his life. In that atmosphere, my creativity came back, because I could try new things in a safe atmosphere and use feedback to hone my skills.

Traits and States and Characters

Note: Tomorrow through Sunday I will be busy leading and doing Moulage at Missouri Hope, a grueling schedule out in the middle of a county park's low maintenance/challenge course area. I don't know if I will have the time, energy, or bandwidth to write installations. I'd love to find the time, because life in the moulage tent tends to be a gruesome party as well as a learning experience.
***********


In psychology, particularly in personality psychology, behaviors and feelings can be categorized in two ways: traits and states.

Traits are behaviors and feelings that are stable over time; they are patterns and behaviors. For those of us who write, traits are items that we document in a character sheet. So we have characters who are introverted or extroverted, quiet or loud, amused or hostile, mellow or excitable (all of these actually fall on a spectrum; there are few total introverts or total extroverts). These are modes we see our characters in day-to-day, and that we describe often through actions, facial expressions and body language, and verbal expressions.

States are behaviors and feelings that result from situations and motives at one point in time. They're fleeting. When the situation resolves, or the motive is realized or released, the state resolves as well. Again, as writers, we express these through actions, facial expressions and body language, and verbal expressions. (Note: It's better to show feelings in writing by describing than simply stating "I'm mad".)

One way to think of states is that they're the behavior that results from challenge, whether that be conflict, threat, or change.

A demonstration of traits versus states:

     Jill sat on the floor in the living room in sweats and bunny slippers, her legs sprawled out in front       of her, her back propped up against the couch. She sat with a bowl of popcorn in her lap,                     watching Next Generation on Netflix with her roommate Emma, who sat on the couch.

     "Data," Jill sighed as she passed the bowl up to Emma, "I want to marry Data."

     "Jill," Emma pointed out dryly, "Data is an android."

     "Yeah, but he'd never piss me off, would he?" Jill joked.

*****

Jill doesn't face any sort of challenge. Her natural personality -- the traits -- show up here. She's laid-back (her posture on the couch, her happy sigh), her bonding with Emma (the popcorn bowl), her sense of humor (wanting to marry Data).

Let's introduce a challenge:

     Jeff strolled in on his lanky legs, puppy in tow. The scar on his cheek accentuated the cold look in       his eyes. Jill stiffened up as Jeff towered over her.

    "Jeff, do you have the rent for me yet?" Jill asked after a deep breath. "You owe three months               now."

     Jill glanced up to see Jeff scrutinize her little black cat sprawled on a chair. She felt a chill as               Jeff's face twisted into an arrogant pout and he casually offered, "It would be a shame if that cat           wound up dead one morning."

     Jill felt herself stand as if pulled by strings; she strode up to Jeff and got in his face, spearing his         gaze as if she was his long-ago drill sergeant. Her voice turned to ice despite her internal                     trembling: "If you so much as lay a finger on my cat, I will take your puppy, I will strangle it, I           will cut it up and feed it to you, and you will think it's chicken." Jill turned on her heel and stalked       out before Jeff could see she was bluffing.
******

Jill has just gone from easygoing to menacing because of a threat to her cat. She carries it off despite the fact she is shaking internally, almost as if she's possessed. But this is not her normal state -- it's just what she's pressed to do.

******

When focusing on state-based behavior (i.e. behavior as the result of a challenge), it has to be believable -- wrapped in trait behavior and an incident that proves the change has a reason.  It also helps if the character has to examine the change in the behavior:

     Jill stood in the bathroom, staring at herself in the mirror. She saw her pale face, but she knew t           that was not the face that had faced Jeff. She had felt only fury, fury she didn't know she had, fury       that she could channel into lethal ice. She knew she would never kill the puppy, much less cook           him for dinner. But she would never let Jeff know that, or else she would fall into danger again.

******

Study yourself. What would you consider your traits? What are some situations that have had you "not acting like yourself" -- in other words, personality states?

Fresh Eyes

(Note: Polish reader, if I email you some Polish dialogue translated by Google Translate, will you tell me if it makes any sense to you in Polish? It would also help if you could give me the corrections.)

*********

Yesterday I discovered the marvel that is looking at a Work in Progress with fresh eyes. 

After work, Richard and I spent time at the local corporate coffeehouse to play with ideas for NaNo. The neutral walls are plastered with glossy posters of their wares and perky, pithy sayings in vinyl decals made at the home office. I prefer independent coffeehouses with their quirky rustic walls and hand-chalked menus paying homage to local institutions, but the nearest one is 45 miles away.

This story starts with the fact that I have two computers, and one of them is more likely to travel with me. I discovered I couldn't get access to Whose Hearts are Mountains because it was open in Scrivener at home, a feature to prevent conflicted copies on two different computers.

So, as not to waste valuable coffee time, I pulled up the document I set aside to start a new novel for NaNo. That novel is Prodigies, and I was almost halfway done when I shelved it. Plotwise, that was the easier half, although I think my protagonists spend too much time running and I may have to go back and fix it.

When looking at it with fresh eyes, however, the questions began rushing through my head: "What if the mind control was a distraction? What if the little girl had her father's healing talent and could use it in reverse? What is the implication of doing this to a young girl?" This could raise the stakes of the plot -- who could you kill at the UN General Assembly meeting that would reduce the world to an exploitable chaos? 

I also found two resources I hadn't been able to find before -- the floor for the UN Assembly Building and the UN Assembly schedule, which will make writing this story much easier.

I may have learned a valuable lesson here -- sometimes putting something away for a while works better than beating your head against it. Lesson two -- work on more than one idea at a time.

Short post -- Moulage and External Validation

I may not be writing as much this week, because this is my big week for performing moulage. If I haven't mentioned it, moulage is casualty simulation for emergency workers. This week I do two events -- a small one this morning where I help out with the high school's annual docudrama where they hammer home the consequences of drinking/texting while driving. Richard and I will moulage seven high schoolers.

This Friday-Sunday is the big event, Missouri Hope. The biggest of the Hope exercises held by Consortium for Humanitarian Service and Education, we will moulage about 200 people by the time we're done. I will have a bigger crew, perhaps 8 per day, and I will provide hands-on training while we create victims -- all simulated injuries of course -- of a major tornado so that emergency personnel and students can use their skills in a realistic scenario.

I have developed a reputation for this among the CHSE exercises, which makes me happy. I know I can do better, and I always try to do better. In that way, it's like writing, but I feel more secure about it because I have external validation. And external validation is one of the biggest motivators there is.

My colleagues call me the Queen of Gore. What better external validation is that?

PS: Light and dark

You believe you know me because we have laughed together on a golden afternoon, as the first of autumn's leaves turn gold and tumble lazily.

You do not know me until you have walked with me through sodden leaves on a night where the wind whips sleet in your face and white-hot forks of lightning bleed into your vision. Here, I am a witch, the child of the storm; I stand on a hill singing to the maelstrom.

You’ve only seen me laugh. I laugh because I’ve screamed; I smile because I’ve raged; I champion the wounded because I’ve been beaten. I rejoice because I have survived.

You cannot honor my light without accepting my darkness.