I’m dreaming, right?

at the park

Lots of writing books say not to start with a dream. They say not to end that it was all a dream. They usually say leave dreams out all together. Nobody likes to read about someone else’s dream. Do you think that is true?

On Thursday I told the school director that I wanted to work two days a week instead of four. I want more time to work on finding an agent and making art. It took months to come to this decision. A few months more to act on it. Typically I work from ten at night until one in the morning and get up at six to face everything else.

When do you get to work on your writing? Do you (would you) lose sleep to do so?

The night after I committed to few hours and less regular pay, I dream the roof of my apartment was about to cave in. Layers of ceiling peeled away to reveal an enormous metal box held up by one bolt. If it fell in, it would kill everyone at home. On the other side of the room my husband pulled back a curtain to reveal a window I didn’t know was there. “Did you know this window was there?” he said.

“I’ve got to figure out how to make that metal room come down safely,” I said.

No dream book is needed to work that out, I suppose.

Does your work (your writing/art) show up in your dreams? Which side of the room are you in–the side about to be crushed by a rusted, creaking forgotten upstairs room or the side with the window to see the sky?

500 wrong words

Can you write a 500-word sentence? 500 exactly.

Shelly Lowenkopf mentioned a fellow named Barnaby Conrad and his 500 word sentence. I couldn’t resist the effort.

Janie Hopkins, her curves and wayward hair, waited by the Hamilton train tracks just within sight of the high school where her boyfriend, or the boy she hoped would be her boyfriend, would see her through the window of the science class; he stared out that cracked, dim window everyday to dream about life elsewhere, places he had yet to read about, places perhaps glimpsed on television but which he knew no one else in town had ever imagined, and Janie Lee hoped that he would see her waiting and place her in that dream even if he put her there by accident, simply because she was there and certainly no other girl in town bothered to put herself in his line of view because why would they when he had no prospects of any kind considering his family’s past and no father would allow his daughter to walk through town in front of God and everybody with a Pilketon boy, but Janie was lucky if being fatherless was ever lucky because no one cared what an orphan did because they expected such a girl to lose her way at the first available opportunity, which was just about every day, especially for her and her curves and wayward hair; didn’t everyone know that the more curves in a girl’s body the more chances to go wrong as if curves meant derailment and this was why a train went in a straight line and everything good was flat and everything suspicious bent one way or another, and this was why Janie’s sister would never wait for Merit Pilketon to see her do anything like stand by the train tracks, looking for all the world as if the train would stop just for her and her hand on her hip, but Janie knew that a boy wasn’t his father no matter what folks said about apples falling from trees; in fact, she liked fallen apples best with their bruises and the feeling they weren’t wanted by something so much larger than themselves and in the case of Merit Pilketon, Janie knew he was the best apple of all, perfect to hold as if she were a teacher and fate were giving her an apple to put on her desk, though she wasn’t really sure she could teach fate anything other than to leave her alone, which was an important lesson for fate to know, and here she scuffed the dirt next to the track as if fate itself were the earth under her feet and that’s how it had power over all of them, but she wasn’t about to concede anything to something she could walk on even if the world did grow from it, everything from weeds to apple trees and her very own self; the dirt couldn’t possibly care what boy she wanted or what she wanted from him and what she wanted from this boy was escape, and who better to offer escape than someone who had already fallen.

Please point out my comma errors. (Commas beat me in my sleep.) Hell. Point out all the errors. It is 500 words long! And I wrote it while my students took an iBT TOEFL reading practice test and decided not to edit.

I challenge you to 500 words. See what happens.

Can’t you wait?

with a fellow RA (Resident Assistant)

I listen at the door in an empty dimly lit hall. The couple are easy to hear.

I knock. “R.A.,” I say. I hate this part.

The two of them stumble around as quietly as they can. “What?” the girl says through the closed door.

“It’s the R.A.,” I say. This is my job. No answer. I knock again.

“Just a minute,” she says. She opens the door in a tee shirt and boxers. “What?”

“May I come in?” I ask. She can say no. Her rights are in the student handbook. No one ever reads the student handbook.

Her mouth twists. She opens the door wide and I step in. “What is it?” she asks.

“I heard voices in the hall,” I say. “You know visiting hours ended at 10.”

She rolls her eyes. “So? Did someone complain?”

Her roommate came and got me. The roommate wanted back in her room. “I heard voices in the hall,” I say again.

“It’s just me,” she says. “Maybe you’ve got the wrong room.”

“May I check your closet?’

She can say no to that too, but she shrugs. I open the closet. The guy is squatting in the laundry basket, clothes cover his head. “Get dressed and meet me out in the hall,” I say, looking away.

I tell the girl I’ll have to write her up. “Skinny fucking bitch,” she says.

My pen shakes when I write down her name and room number. I hope she doesn’t notice. “I’ll put that in the write-up,” I say. She makes a face.

“I’ll be in the hall,” I say.

Waiting in the hall, I wonder why they can’t wait until the weekend. The weekend is 24-hour visitation. It is Thursday night. But I don’t have a boyfriend. I’ve never had a boyfriend.

The hallway is deserted, but the other girls are surely listening behind their closed doors. The guy comes out and gives me half a smile. “I need your ID,” I say.

He hands it to me and tells me his name at the same. He’s dressed, but he’s got more clothes rolled up under his arm. He follows me down the hall, and in the elevator we’re alone. I don’t look at him. I write his information down on my scrap of paper. “That it?” he asks.

I give him back his ID and nod. “Will she get in trouble?” he asks.

No guy has ever asked me to break a rule for him. “It just goes in a file,” I say. “The director will talk to her. If nothing else happens, that’s it.”

“You do this often?” he asks.

I lean back against the elevator wall and cross my arms over my chest. “There is 24 hour visitation starting tomorrow.” I don’t look at him, but he kind of laughs.

“Sorry,” he says when the doors open.

“Me too,” I say.

We walk through the lobby to the front doors of the dorm. As far as I know, I never see him again.

My son and I go to the bookstore a lot. He likes to pick out a few books, find an out-of-the-way corner, and have me read to him. Yesterday, we walked past the fiction section and he said, “It’s so pretty.”

I looked at the shelves, the pillar, the window, up the vaulted ceiling. “Yes, it is.” And I can’t decide if I’m jealous or inspired by all the books I see. What if I had a book on one of the shelves? Most of the books that are there I’ll never read. I can’t bring myself to say any of those books are bad because I’ve always hated that sour grape fable and they have managed something I have not.

How do you feel when you read a terrible book? Do you want to quit or try harder?

And one more for good measure…

This is the last chapter of Drowning Karma I’m going to post. If you’re so inclined, chapter three is here. Thank you for reading.

Another chapter…

Chapter Two of Drowning Karma is up at Lake Belle. I shall know go wrestle with my insecurity and other demons.

don’t try this at home

When a cockroach runs across the bathroom floor, do not think you are a gymnast on the parallel bars. The towel rack will come out of the wall, anchors and all, leaving four holes and torn wallpaper. You will hit the ground shoulder first. The stool you sit on while you fix your hair will fall on you. Bits of drywall will fall on you and coat the floor. You will have bruises on your shin, a pulled muscle in your thigh, a terrific bruise on your lower back, a bruise on your elbow, a pulled muscle from your elbow to your shoulder, tiny cuts on your fingers, a bruise on the back of your neck, and pulled muscles in both shoulders. It will hurt every time you turn your head. For about ten minutes you will fell like vomiting. For much longer you will feel like an idiot.

Amazing the power of a 2 1/2 inch cockroach.

When I let people read my work, I have moments of panic. A desire to escape as if there is some trick to escaping myself. But usually the long list of excuses for why everything is still not right just leads to looking more foolish. I’m tired and in pain and wondering why I can’t pull off the published author trick. Hey, I’m not a gymnast.

Lately the why-aren’t-you-published question is akin to the why-are-you-in-pain question. The cockroach answer is as embarrassing, but more people understand it.

If publication is a goal, what holds you back?

You could say that publication isn’t necessary. You could also say I should’ve just mushed the cockroach. But I don’t actually believe either of those statements.

You think you know where you’re going.

I don’t know many things about my father. We are eating dinner–my son, my father, my father’s wife, and I. “So, Dad,” I say. He looks up at me. We sit across from one another. “I have a question for you.”

“Okay,” he says and eats a meatball.

I say it quickly as if I’ve decided to jump into a pool of cold water. “Do you remember your first girlfriend?”

My father’s wife laughs. My son laughs. I smile brightly.

“Oh yeah,” he says and twists noodles around his fork. He eats the noodles.

“Do you remember her name?” I feel braver now. Certain things I know. He married my mother when he was 28. They’d known each other 2 years when they got married. He’d left home, Rhode Island, as a teenager to live on his own in Key Biscayne, Florida.

My dad nods. He laughs a little. “Yeah, I remember her name.”

“Good luck getting anything out of him,” his wife says. She laughs too. “Oh boy,” she says.

“Well? Dad. What was her name?” I know my father. He will either tell me the truth or an obvious lie like Martha Washington or Queen Elizabeth. I’m ready. If he tells the truth, I will ask about her. If he lies, I will tease him. I will get my step-mother and my son to gang up on him. I’m about to find out something I never knew about my dad and I can’t believe I had the nerve to ask. “Dad?”

“Marta,” he says and eats a tomato.

I’m named after my mom. “What? Seriously?”

He nods. “Yes. Your mother.”

My father never jokes about my mom. He doesn’t talk about her at all. It is impossible that this is a joke. My brain stalls on this fact. He was 26 when they met. 26 and she is his first girlfriend? But I can’t ask that. That question goes too far. My mom? My dad who always had a date when he was single? In-between wives he had lots of girlfriends. What was he talking about? “Oh,” I say.

He keeps eating dinner. I’m grateful when my son wants to know what his grandfather’s first job was.

I think I know where a story is going. I don’t write an outline or take notes or draw charts. I just imagine a character in a situation and run. But the story goes one way, I’m sure I know…and then I don’t. I’m in a strange place, saying things that I never expected. Later, I read over a scene and say out loud, “Seriously?”

My plots feel such a mess I should have a better plan. I should know what is going to happen. But I don’t know how to do that.

Do you?

Girl Goes Fishing! Now that’s news.

me making headlines

when girls fish, it makes news!

When I was little, I liked to fish and climb trees while wearing a pretty dress. I played with my barbies and my dad’s tools. In grade school, I played with the boys after school and had crushes on most all of them.

When you look at books, what tells you it is a girl or a boy book? My son likes stories about girls. He likes Junie B. Jones and Olivia. He’s picked books with boys on the cover and with girls on the cover, but he’s learned not to pick anything pink. He used to pick pink, but not anymore. Or he does, and then says he can like pink when it is just us.

Gentlemen, would you pick a book with a pink cover?

In my art, sometimes there are rabbits. The owner of the store that sells my art, told me that every time a man buys my work that has a rabbit, the man has to say something not believing he was actually buying a bunny.

If my work is ever published, I hope you menfolk buy my work. Is it too girly? How can I tell?

one of those moments

I know that this book The World House isn’t my book, but just seeing this kind of gave me pause. Hey, my novel The Labyrinth House isn’t even published, so take that! guy with a cool cover and an agent and…

oh, jeez.

You decide.

If you happen to like my art, I’m going to be selling some work for any price. And if that sounds like something you’d like to know more about, go to Words Are Art.