Taking Requests and Begging Approval

A friend of mine often insults and belittles artists who “sell out.” Once he suspects them of self-promotion and of wanting to be a little too successful, he turns on them. And as my old boss used to say–once you get paid for doing what you love, the quality of your work goes down.

Sigh. I guess I’ll have to take my chances. A few of you have suggested that you might possibly be persuaded to buy one of my pieces, and at the risk of sounding like a jerk, now is your chance–although I have NO IDEA how to go about this. If you do happen to be interested, let me know. And if you’ve seen a piece of mine that caught your fancy, let me know that too. I will be working on way to display things and take Pay Pal and all that horrid business stuff.

How do you feel about promoting your work? Does putting something up for sale change you?

Thanks. Now Happy Halloween. Go get scared.

But we thought black was fashionable…

“We like her a lot. She’s pretty, funny, and smart. Really funny. But we’re not sure we’re going to let her in,” L. said.

“Why not?” the three of us asked.

L. put down her fork. “Well, she wears black all the time.”

“I wear black,” said JT.

“Yeah, but everything she owns is black. Everything. Really. Don’t you think that’s kind of weird? She wears black fingernail polish like all the time.”

“But you like her, don’t you?” one of us asked.

“Oh, she’s great. But do we really want her to represent us? Can she really fit in?” L. picked her fork back up. “It’s a hard decision.”

L. was talking about her sorority and rush. J., JT, and I weren’t in a sorority and didn’t want to be, but even as we rolled our eyes when L. pledged her sorority, we’d stayed friends. We just didn’t visit her in her sorority stairwell. Until the girl in black.

We dressed up all in black one night and traipsed down to her stairwell. We put on our most sullen faces and knocked on her door. The sorority girl who opened the door stared at us a second before she spoke. “Yes?”

“We’re here to see L. We’re her friends.”

L. was pleased she happened to be wearing all white.

Someone told me the other day I should be writing fantasy because that’s what is in. Seems to me that by the time us ordinary mortals know what is “in,” it will promptly be out. But how marketable should you try to make a piece of work? You want to sell your novel, don’t you?

The last novel I wrote goes in strange directions and may well be a niche kind of thing. Like the way David Lynch’s Twin Peaks wasn’t for everyone either. But if you’re a publishing nobody, who’s going to let you in far enough to carve out anything? Publishers need to make money after all.

How much do market trends influence what you write? Would you be happy to carve out your little niche? Or will only bestellerdom do the trick for you?

I’ll say it again and again and again…

mom looking in the mirror, aunt E. holding her drink, grandma in the reflection

Mom painted and took pictures. Though she got paid for filing and typing. Aunt E. wrote poems, made sculpture, painted. She was married to a man with a wooden leg. When she was young she was a dancer and a piano player. At 8 I showed her a poem I wrote about the sun. She said it was a sexist poem because I called the sun a he. I never knew how she paid the bills. Grandmother danced and played piano before she had children. She had a secret marriage at 18. It lasted two years. She balanced people’s books for a living. Grandmother and E’s mother left their father for an Argentinean and they played in a jazz band.

There are the other stories, other adjectives, that could make them look very different, but of course I prefer these. When I rewrite my stories, I find words I use again and again, not realizing that these certain words keeping falling on the page even though I think I’m writing something new.

It’s never new.

What words do you come back to again and again?

A Scary Place

 

Ready for scary things at your door?

Took acting class tonight. Did what my instructor calls a freezing reading. No chance to look at it beforehand. You only see the line when it is your turn to say it. You have to feel what the other person says before you look at your line. I loved that! And was surprised at the people in the class who didn’t like it at all.

I felt so good about it, I volunteered for a last extra improv scene near the end of class. I’m terrified of acting and yet…hey, I’m paying good money to be in this class and my life is good–why am I going to sit there wishing to be asked to the dance? The others may have been ready to quit a few minutes early and go home, but I jumped up and after an awkward minute, a fellow joined me up at the front of the class.

For this improv, one actor is given an objective and the other is not told what it is. My objective in the scene was to tell him to move out. Our instructor told us not to give away too much too soon–and if there is one thing I can do well, it’s be evasive.

Yea!

In other scary places, I’ve committed to doing the Austin Fine Arts festival. It’s like going from first grade to college in a week. I am so not ready for this.

Not ready for NaNoWriMo either, but I’m showing up for that.

Friends I haven’t seen in six years are showing up next week too. We’ve been friends since we were 18.

It’s exam week at school. I haven’t written the exams yet.

And I’m taking my son trick-or-treating.

What scary things are you up to these days? And what do you find scary about writing?

Whiskey, Surprises, and Sharks

He kept a whiskey bottle under the driver’s seat of his station wagon. His flaming haired daughter, K., sat beside him, and my cousin, L., and I sat in the back. He had stubble and slouched, bony shoulders. We were ten years old.

He was supposed to be taking us to see The Jungle Book. If my mom had seen K’s dad, she never would’ve allowed me to go, but I’d asked her over the phone. And she had my aunt’s assurances that K’s dad was a fine neighbor.

with my cousin

He had several swigs of whiskey by the time the police officer pulled him over. He smiled when he took his ticket for driving too fast, and then we were back on our way. At the theater, The Jungle Book was not playing. They were showing, however, Jaws II.

I knew my mom would kill all of us if I went inside and I didn’t want to see it anyway. My stomach twisted but I took my ticket from K’s dad, and followed my giggling cousin and her squealing friend. The place was crowded and they headed straight for the front row. I couldn’t decide if I was more afraid of the shark or of my mom when she found out where I was.

Mom found out where I was because she called the theater to ask when The Jungle Book would end. Her reaction was what I expected.

Thank god she never knew about the whiskey.

In fiction, how predictable is okay? Too unpredictable and you leave believability on the side of the road. Too predictable and you might as well snooze in the backseat. How do you know your characters and be surprised by them? Do you remember any characters who in the end of the story surprised you? Was it in a good or in a bad way? Or maybe you don’t like surprises…

Baby Birds and Other Consequences

end of weekend visitation

The baby bird lay in the road perfectly centered in the lane. It struggled. It opened and closed its mouth. I decided to save it. I was eight.

I knew what my dad would say if I handled the bird with my bare hands. I went to the carport and found stained gardening gloves, the shovel, a ratty towel, and a cardboard box. Cars rarely came down our road and even if one did, I figured the bird would be okay. It was, after all, not where wheels should go.

The bird was still there. I looked down the road and coming around the far away curve I saw a van. I considered scooping up the bird, but worried I might drop the little thing and not be able to get out of the way in time. The bird would be okay in the center of the lane.

Shovel in hand, I stayed on the side of the road. Drivers veered when they saw children near the road, so I moved further back. Any sensible grown up would know that a girl that far from the shoulder couldn’t possibly jump into the road without warning. I tried to look in the other direction just to prove that I had no interest in the road at all. But I wanted to keep an eye on the bird, fluttering and gasping in the morning heat.

The van veered anyway. Its right wheels just in the center of the lane. Blood and insides burst out and smeared the pavement with down and feather stuck in.

If I hadn’t been standing there, the van wouldn’t've moved toward the yellow line. If I’d stood even further back…if I’d sat down… I got what I could of the bird in the shovel and carried it over to a patch of dirt between a palm tree and an oak.

Characters in fiction are supposed to have consequences for their actions. Unintended consequences are the most fun for the reader, I think. Have you ever read a story where you thought the bad guy suffered no consequences? What about where the hero got no reward? Do such endings disappoint you? How important are the consequences in fiction? Without them does a story feel incomplete?

One Bad Thing

Pricing. This was the most difficult thing about hanging my work–deciding on prices and believing that someone would give up hard earned money for something I made. How on earth do other artist figure this out? The cost of materials I understand, but the value of my time and effort and imagination? Crazy.

Neighbors, Fish, & Random Things

Rowena tagged me for six random things. Her art is beautiful and she’s cool too. Go see for yourself. Her tag is well-timed since I’m storied out. So, here is a random photograph, and six random things. Make of them what you will–as if I could stop you.

the neighbors caddy corner from us

1. When I was 6, my neighbor’s husband and his friends took me alligator hunting on an airboat. They put the dead 8 ft. alligator in a box under my seat.

2. My dad’s favorite story about me is when I was two. He put my playpen in his boat and took me fishing. The catfish he caught swung back and hit me in the face and covered me in fish gunk. I laughed and laughed–according to dad.

3. I feel compelled to eat M&M’s in a specific color order. Really, things that comes in different colors I will compulsively put in the order of the rainbow–red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

4. Rooftops are awesome. Given an chance, I will climb up on one. Now that I think about it, it has been too long since I’ve been on a rooftop…

5. When I was 5, I thought the wolf from Peter and the Wolf lived in our toilet.

6. I had about ten imaginary friends as a child. We played tag in the back yard.

Oh, which cyberspace friends shall I tag? I know some people are not into this sort of thing, so ignore this if you wish. No bad luck is attached. Actually, what I would really like is for each of you to tell me one random thing about yourself. Pretend we are having a coffee–or an ice cream at DQ–and you are struck by some random thought you want share.

Opinion Polls and Other Measures

Since I’m jumping in over my head I might as well have as many witnesses as possible. I’m going to apply to the Art City Austin festival (and here I was thinking I wasn’t having a midlife crisis. ha.). So, I’ve got to choose 4 photographs/scans of my work to submit. There are a ton of shots here, but if you have a strong desire to offer your opinion on which ones to include, I’d appreciate the help. It is voting season after all.

How to get across a room.

my grandmother with her dancing students

“People was treat you like you have money,” I said. I was walking with my grandmother to her car in the library parking lot. I was 14.

“What do you mean?” she asked, unlocking her red Chevrolet hatchback.

I waited for her to buckle her seat belt. “They treat you better than they treat some other people but you don’t have any money or anything. I mean…Oh, I don’t know what I mean but they listen and do what you want.”

“I don’t know about that, sweetheart.” She put the car into gear. “It’s probably my posture. Posture is very important. You know that I don’t ever want to see you slouch. Now, where shall we go for lunch?”

I took my acting class tonight and it made me think about the way people carry themselves (I don’t slouch by the way), move through a room, and move around other people. This isn’t an entirely new thought. In grad school sometimes a friend and I distracted ourselves from our books by commenting how people walked and what it said about them. But tonight this acting class exercise made me think about characters and how they move–the fast walkers and the slow walkers. The ones who lead with their head and the ones who lead with their pelvis. The ones who zip and the one who drag. I don’t know that this detail will make it into the story, but it seems I ought to know.

Have you ever considered how your characters move and what it says about them?