May is here! And I don’t know what you’re writing these days, but I’m taking a giant stab at Story-A-Day May. I’ve managed it before, but I’m not sure this time how chemo treatments are going to get in the way. To be accurate, how the side-effects are going to get in the way.
But don’t we always have things to get in the way?
I like to post my stories in their rough, rough form over at my other blog The Fairy Tale Asylum. If you’re participating, let me know.
The drains are gone! If you’ve ever had surgery that required post-op drains, you know how awesome it is to be drain free. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, google Jackson-Pratt drain. I chose not to take a picture of mine. It’s kind of hard to make them look pretty.
Writing about difficult subjects takes distance. At least for me. I can’t write well about anything I’m in the middle of. Can you? I don’t mean journaling, which is one thing. I mean, writing a story that speaks to other people, that conveys the emotion, trauma, insights of the experience.
I don’t plan to write a straightforward cancer narrative anyway. But I could add something to the Frankenstein’s monster story–the stitching and the bruising and the blood and the feeling of not being completely put together properly.
I’ve also got new thoughts on Rapunzel. Nothing like losing your hair to chemo to give you a new perspective on Rapunzel.
Life isn’t where I thought it was going to be. But that is often the case, isn’t it?
I came across a site I quite like, and the fellow over there is having a flash fiction writing challenge–a fairy tale upgrade in less than 1,000 words. The site is terribleminds.
The fairy tale upgrade is this.
The Mermaid
There are other fish in the sea and June Mintz is a fish that keeps getting reeled in. She tells herself to swim on by, to ignore the bait, but there is a weakness in heart that makes her bite.
Trent O’Connor lives to sail the sea of love and he is not a man who throws fish back. He has a smile that charms, but that is not what catches June the first time. He looks at her and says things like, “Tell me about that.” He says, “That must have been hard for you.” He says, “You’re a strong person to have gone through all your problems and survived.”
June believes the things he says means he cares. She thinks he is interested in where she has been and where she is going. She hopes that she is going into his arms and into his heart. But these are not the places he wants her to go.
Trent sees the harm he causes no more than a fisherman sees the blood on a hook. He notices, but he forgets. He says he remembers the important things.
This summer is long and hot. No breeze stirs the water. June stands on the pier and looks at the shadows of fish darting under the surface. Trent is talking to another girl back on the grass. The girl is pretty and young, shining in the heat.
The water shows the empty blue sky. June sips her wine and tries to remember why she accepted this party invitation. What fish has ever caught a fisherman?
She wonders how the ocean would feel on her skin. The girl’s laughter drifts over the grass and out over the water. The hot air is hard to breathe. June thinks about how there are so many fishermen in the world with nets and hooks. Every breath gets harder standing on the pier.
Trent is watching the shimmer of the girl’s hair, when the hostess taps him on the shoulder. “Have you seen June?” she asks.
“June? Oh. She’s on the pier.”
“No. Her glass is on the pier. And her purse. But I can’t find her anywhere.”
Trent, the girl, and the hostess walk onto the pier. They stare at the water. Something splashes off in the distance. “Look,” says the girl. “Did you see that fish?”
“I didn’t think there were any fish that size this close to shore,” the hostess said.
“Maybe it’s a mermaid,” Trent said. “I’d sell my soul to catch one of those.”
don’t stay in the cup
Sometimes the mind just brims over with ideas. Do you ever have trouble deciding what to focus on or what to pursue?
I’m going to pursue as many as I can.
One is the idea of a princess detective. I want to try to write a princess that isn’t what most people think. I’m writing about her over at The Fairy Tale Asylum.
Another idea goes back to my love of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks and Agent Dale Cooper. Cooper is one of my most favorite characters on television ever. Twice readers have said that my writing reminded them of Twin Peaks! I don’t know why since I don’t have a murder nor do I write about the northwest, logging, or the FBI–but my character do drink a lot of coffee.
Anyway, I’ve started another blog for a character in love with Agent Dale Cooper and determined to find him in the real world. For her travels and travails, read searching for Agent Dale Cooper. If you want to help her find her man, feel free to leave a comment.
I’ve got an art show coming in October as well. Projects will be posted over at Words Are Art.
And finally, there is always facebook.
What projects are you juggling in life?
I wouldn’t literally eat a poisoned apple, but metaphorically I think I already have.
The evil queen in disguise is my own psyche, and the apple is seeds of doubt fleshed out with insecurity, neurosis, and fear. Hard to believe anyone takes a bite of that.
How long has it been since an agent asked me to write a book jacket synopsis?
Feels like a hundred years. Unfortunately time hasn’t cleared my head or given me any good ideas. To explore another fairy tale, it’s more like the brambles around my thinking have grown thicker and stronger, and I’m going to need a helluva sword to cut through it all.
In this scenario, I’ve got to be my own prince. Good heavens, what part of my personality is that?
Throwing away an opportunity to get an agent because I can’t get myself to write that book jacket copy is about as dumb and passive as any Disney princess has ever been. I’ve written thousands upon thousands of words, and yet these few feel impossible. I start and start and start, and I get angrier and angrier with myself. Don’t I know better?
Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
who’s the best writer of them all?
The one who writes instead of worries.
What is my novel about?
A girl. And her best friend. One has been hurt and everyone knows. Well, almost everyone. The other has been hurt, but it’s a secret. …
That’s rubbish.
She accepts a ride from her best friend’s brother. She refuses to talk about what happened, but she’ll try anything to forget. …
No, no, no.
Two girls go into the woods at midnight for magic and revenge. …
Well, that’s silly.
Maybe this means my novel should be shut away in a drawer and forgotten.
Do I really want my dream to die because I can’t write one page of explaining my own novel? What is the worst thing that could happen if my writing fails? Well, whatever it is, worse things have happened. Life doesn’t depend on publication. I can keep writing anyway. That’s the main thing.
I look though at published novels and then I look at my own unpublished work… I’m reminded of a professor I had in grad school who said my work lacked a certain…coherence. Now, this was the head of the department who had also called me–in front of an entire class–an idiot, but this professor told me he liked my writing. He said it was original. I had unique ideas. That I looked at things from interesting angles. Honestly, I don’t know what he meant. But he also said that I seemed incapable of putting my work together in a sensible form. That my work suffered from incoherence.
Writing this synopsis/book jacket shouldn’t be this hard.
Now. Where’s my apple?
Have you ever seen something–a garden gate perhaps, a picture hanging on a cafe wall, an odd, unexpected object in an odd and expected place–that made you stop and look again. That stirred your heart, maybe your gut, a place deep within?
I love connecting with a picture, a story, a random object.
Imagine if something I made did the same for someone else. Even if I never publish anything, connecting with someone through something I created would mean wonders.
When I was 16, I read this book, The Truth about Unicorns. I’ve blogged about it before. I loved that book so much, when I got to the end, I went straight back to the beginning and read it again. Why did I love it?
I don’t know.
But that book reached me. Maybe this is problem. I want to write a book like that book made me feel.
Or how Watership Down made me feel.
Or The Phantom Tollbooth.
Mama Day.
But how does one write a book like that?
I don’t know. But that’s why I write. Eight novels and a pile of short stories, and I haven’t written that story yet as far as I can tell. I believe in that story, and one day I’m going to write it.
What book do you aspire to?
Have you heard the theory that there are countless parallel universes, that at particular moments in your life when one decision was made, another universe began with another you who lived the choice you didn’t make.
dad
What moment in your childhood would change where you are now? Of course, perhaps it the small forgotten decision that made all the difference. You’re alive because you took an extra minute to tie your shoe and so you weren’t on your bike in the intersection when the truck ran the stop sign. But those moments you can never know.
When I look back I think about the day when I was in the 6th grade and my dad chose to believe his wife, my step-mother, instead of me. Perhaps I wouldn’t have gone to live with my mother. If hadn’t gone to live with my mother, she wouldn’t have needed to move. If she’d hadn’t have moved, we wouldn’t have ended up living with her boyfriend. I’d be telling a different story today.
What happened though was that my father said, “I don’t understand why you’d say that. She works hard to make our home nice. I want you to try harder. She’s had a hard life, and she only wants what’s best.”
In the string theory, not only is there a world where I stayed with my father, there is also a world where he and his second wife never got together at all. I like to think a me is out there who experienced a tranquil childhood.
That me probably wouldn’t be a writer.
When I decided to live with my mother, I needed to lie. I left for my summer visitation, and on the way out the door, I kissed my dad’s cheek. “See you in two weeks,” I said.
But in two weeks my dad didn’t see me. He didn’t see me for almost a year because the judge wouldn’t allow it. Maybe there’s a universe where the judge told me to return to my dad and step-mother. I don’t want to know that universe.
Our universe though remains the only one we have access to. It doesn’t do much good to tell a child in trouble–you’re okay in another universe.
Believe your child. When they’re older, they’ll remember the person who believed.
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This is part of a blog hop–Self as Child. Plum Tree works to promote children’s art and stories (please submit!).
Other writers participating: Tonia at Passionfind, C.C.Cole, Deb Hockenberry, and more to come.
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On a side note–I’m writing very short stories for Story-a-Day May! Stories are here. Are you writing?
I think the loveliest time of the year is the pub date, I do. Don’t you? Course you do!
Wait. What?
(A gold star to whomever gets the reference in my blog post title.)
I’m taking part in Story-a-Day May. Are you? I’ll post the stories over at The Fairy Tale Asylum. At the end of the month I may be locked up with rest of the inmates…
Do you participate in writing challenges?
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For artists–or rather for parents of artists–remember Youth Tube at Plum Tree Books. We are always looking for submissions of children’s art.
I may be excited.
my art of the imaginary lake
No. Definitely.
I have story and my art published over at Scheherezade’s Bequest! Please take a look.
The online journal has lots of great stories and links.
Wahoo!
And as always, I’m putting up some of my other stories over at The Imaginary Lake.
Thanks to everyone who has encouraged and supported me. And you keep writing too.
La-di-da-la-di-di.
In a teeny-tiny way I’m publishing something. No agent! Just wordpress. Ah wordpress, letting the rabble speak.
Anyway, I’ve fussed with my fiction blog–The Imaginary Lake–and added a few fairy tales from last year’s Story-a-Day challenge. Read something if you’ve a mind to.
And that is all for now, lovely reading world.
