Sunday, June 28, 2009

Twelve Wonderful Years

Today (yesterday, by the time this is posted) is Old Dog's and my 12th anniversary.

Although not without its share of difficult times, our marriage has been singularly blessed. We talked about celebrating by going out to dinner, but wound up hitting a National Chain That Shall Remain Nameless for breakfast instead.

This NCTSRN is divided up into sections, all of which belly up to a food buffet. The sections are divided by walls inset with cute little windows. Through one of these windows, I saw that the section next to us, the last one at our end of the restaurant, had emptied out and a waitress was cleaning.

Armed with a rag, a bucket and a blue aerosol can, she was wiping down walls. She'd set the bucket and the can on each table, climb onto a chair, and then scrub the wall abover her head. When she was done, she'd pull out the blue can and spray a some kind of mist, with the same abandon that was once employed by women cementing a beehive hairdo into permanence with FinalNet. The mist fell, like a low-hanging cloud, onto everything below.

Figuring it was some generic brand of disinfectant, I waited for her to turn the label my way. About 5,000 cc's of mystery mist later, she finally did, and I discovered it wasn't, in fact, a generic item, it was a brand name:

Raid.

Old Dog and I were about the only people in our section, but the fresh fruit and salad bars just happened to be at our end of the restaurant, too.

Of course I chatted with the manager. What I really wanted was my money back, but I accepted a business card comping us for two future meals. (Cause you never know when Hell might freeze over.) Then the manager headed off to confiscate Clara Clean-up's blue can.

As for Old Dog and me, we did what anyone would do after being doused with Raid.

We bugged out.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Fiction Friday: Voice, This Week’s Winner and Prompt VIII

“’My neighbor Mrs. Hartman said she had a cousin in the hospital over in Atlanta that told her that a patient there went out of his room to get a breath of fresh air, and they didn’t find him until six months later, locked out on the sixth-floor roof. Said by the time they found him, there wasn’t anything left but a skeleton in a hospital gown. Mr. Dunaway told me that when he was in the hospital, they stole his false teeth right out of the glass when he was being operated on. Now, what kind of a person would steal an old man’s teeth?’” – Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop CafĂ©

“Computer Boy swaggers over to my cube to help me open this one knucklehead email Phoenix sent me and within about, oh, two seconds, I’m ready to whip off his khakis and blow him right there.” -- Steve Almond, “Geek Player, Love Slayer”

“We have been lost to each other for so long.
My name means nothing to you. My memory is dust.
This was not your fault, or mine. The chain connecting mother to daughter was broken and the word passed to the keeping of men, who had no way of knowing. That is why I became a footnote, my story a brief detour between the well-known history of my father, Jacob, and the celebrated chronicle of Joseph, my brother.” – Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“Bert Baxter rang the school to ask me to call round urgently. Mr. Scruton told me off, he said the school telephone was not for the convenience of the pupils. Get stuffed, Scruton, you pop-eyed git!!! Bert was in a terrible state. He has lost his false teeth. He has had them since 1946, they have got sentimental value for him because they used to belong to his father.” -- Sue Townsend, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 ¾

“When I was a little girl I used to dress Barbie up without underpants. On the outside she’d look like the perfect lady. Tasteful plastic heels, tailored suit. But underneath she was naked. I’m a bail enforcement agent now – also known as a fugitive apprehension agent, also known as a bounty hunter. I bring ‘em back dead or alive. Or at least I try. And being a bail enforcement agent is sort of like being bare-bottom Barbie. …Okay, maybe it’s not like that for all enforcement agents, but I frequently feel like my privates are alfresco. Figuratively speaking.” – Janet Evanovich, High Five

In the above examples you may have noticed that:
1) You couldn’t swap them around: that is, you could never use the voice of Mrs. Threadgoode from Fried Green Tomatoes to tell the story of Stephanie Plum (High Five), or the voice of Dinah from The Red Tent to tell Adrian Mole’s tale.
2) You already know a whole lot about the narrator, just from the words and phrases he or she chooses.
3) You know that Fried Green Tomatoes is set in the South, and Adrian Mole lives in England, even though neither of those things is specifically stated.
4) Likewise, all of them are set in current time, except for The Red Tent.
5) You already have a pretty good idea whether this is a story/book you’d enjoy reading.

This Week’s Winner

With your writing getting stronger week by week, it’s become necessary for me to devise a tie-breaker. So what I’ve been doing (as you may have observed) is using the topic du jour as the deciding factor. Last week I talked about sympathy, and chose the winner based on how sympathetic I found the protagonist. This week, the topic is voice, giving Jeff the win. Although each of the stories was strong, Jeff’s did the best job of aligning the voice of the narrator/protagonist with the story he was telling.

The Heat of Battle

We had differing agendas. Our blades clanging and flashing in the light, I noticed he was staying close to the traditional moves. I was feinting with the old school approach, but I was going to throw a curveball every damn chance I got. The heat and pressure was getting to us both, I had seen him make at least a dozen missteps. Seeing the cracks in his attack I knew I had to press my advantage, use his weaknesses, and solidify my position.

Only one of us could be the new Iron Chef.


Next Week’s Prompt

It was a small thing, but the consequences....

If you'd like to play along, you can find the rules here.

Note: In answer to the question Steven G posted on last week's post, I'll talk about speculative fiction next week.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

The Naked Man

Monday night, while I was diligently banging away on my novel, Old Dog watched “How I Met Your Mother.” The episode centered on a scheme for getting laid: the Naked Man. According to one of the male characters, 2 out of 3 times, if you wait until your date/hostess is out of the room and remove all your clothes, when she returns she will have sex with you.

Old Dog told me about it later, on the assumption that it was a premise created for this TV show. But I know that the Naked Man is a real-life tactic, because I know two women who’ve encountered it.

The first was a recently-divorced woman in her early thirties. Following a very nice first date, she invited a man to her apartment for dinner. It was after the meal, while she was putting her five-year-old daughter to bed, that he executed the Naked Man. She returned to the living room to find his bare ass ensconced on her couch. After their meeting-of-the-minds shouting match, he asked to use the phone, and she overheard him say, “No, it didn’t work out. Just come pick me up. I’ll tell you about it later.”

This guy not only pulled the Naked Man ploy, he also went for the “I-have-to-sleep-over-because-I-don’t-have-a-ride” trick.

But it was the second incident that showed me that the Naked Man respects neither age nor experience.

My friend, Janet, is one of the world’s most inherently attractive women. Janet is to men what Mozart was to music. When I lived in Minnesota, she taught me the few flirting skills I’ve ever learned: the Dodge, the Sidestep, the Change-the-Subject-Giggle.

Later, at my bachelorette party, where my guests ranged from Janet, in her 50’s, to my daughter and her friends (mid-20’s), a group of college boys were sitting at the next table. By the end of the evening, this entire table of young men was clustered around Janet, hanging on every word and giggle she uttered.

One evening, Janet returned from the bathroom to find her date, an airline employee, doing the Naked Man in her recliner. She was forced to give him the “I think of you as a friend” talk.

And this is how good she is: a few months later, when a friend’s brother needed an airline ticket, Naked Airline Guy flew to Dayton to escort the brother back to St. Paul so he could cop a free ticket.

Because the Wily Woman kicks the Naked Man’s ass every time.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Mot Juste

As a patriotic American, I'm a registered voter, which means I'm sloshing around in the jury pool along with all the other flag-wavers.

Whenever I get summoned I try to be a good sport about it because, if I'm ever on trial, I want the folks on MY jury to be good sports. The thought of the jury box being like a cageful of tigers waiting to get sprung, or those poor chickens that PETA is always making you feel guilty about, that live in 1' x 1' cages their entire lives, squeezing out eggs, gives me chills. (BTW – I only eat cage-free eggs. I cannot STAND the thought of those poor chickens never once getting to spread their wings or walk around.)

Anyway, last September I got called for jury duty. I was still at Ye Olde Job at the time, and was actually pretty tickled at the prospect of missing a few days of work at full pay. But I didn’t get to realize that twin goals of good citizenship while playing hooky, because the prosecutor kicked me off the jury.

For no good reason.

I got seated 9th or 10th and figured I was sitting pretty for at least a week of working 6 or 7 hours days instead of my usual 9 or 10. But during voir dire, I noticed that the prosecutor was giving me these eagle-spotting-a-mouse looks. Then she asked me a couple of questions and decided to spit me out.

Why, you ask?

When she asked me if, should she prove her case with a preponderance of the evidence, but I still had a shadow of a doubt, would I be able to convict, I responded, “Sure.” One syllable, but as soon as I uttered it, her head whipped around and she pinned me to the jury box with the aforementioned predatory glare. I saw her exchange looks with the defense attorney. They asked me a few more questions, which I answered in ways they found to be equally unacceptable (because “sure” is apparently way less serious than “yes”).

Then they went away and conferred, and when they came back, they told me to take a hike.

I walked the walk of shame with the other two people who got canned (one for knowing a local attorney who was somehow involved in the trial, the other for being friends with the arresting officer).

But me, I got sacked over word choice.

If you want to read about someone who really deserved to be kept off (and sent to jail), check out this story.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Fiction Friday - This Week's Winner and Prompt VIII

So last week I grumbled about how much stronger the entries are getting every week, and how that makes it a lot harder for me to choose a winner.

This week I'm going to confess that it's also making it tougher on you.

This week's entries were, again, very good. Each of them were well written and each had an interesting twist. Each was told from a single POV. Each was "voicey," a term meaning that the personality of the narrator or protagonist comes across very clearly from the words and grammatical structures he or she chooses (I'll blog more about that next week, because it's probably the greatest single thing that separates good fiction from great fiction.)

So, I wound up making my choice based on something called "sympathy." This isn't the sympathy that makes you send cards to sick friends or flowers to a funeral. It's a literary term that decribes the quality that causes readers to want to keep reading about a character. Many times it's because of the character's positive characteristics: courage, humor, honesty, generosity.

Other times, though, a character can be pretty thoroughly nasty, but there's still something compelling about him: Hannibal Lecter comes to mind.

Nick Hornby's Jess, in A Long Way Down, a VERY angry adolescent, has to be one of the least compassion-generating characters I've ever met. At one point in the book she reveals some personal information that engenders our first glimmer of understanding for what makes her so angry/rude/rebellious. But the instant the reader feel a surge of compassion toward her, she turns on the him, snarling, "You can just take your sympathy and shove it up your saggy old arse." I remember actually recoiling as I read this line. And yet, she's such a strong, well-drawn character that I found myself reading on, hoping she'd get past her current circumstances.

Anyway, the "winning" personality of the protagonist secured this week's win for Sandra Leigh.

Love Hurts

You never meant this to happen. You wanted him to notice you, that's all. You loved the way he moved, adored his voice - and longed for the touch of his hand.

He walked in and tossed his newspaper down. It bounced off a table and crashed to the floor. As he went to pick it up, you grabbed it. He bent down. You stood up. You and he collided, painfully.

Now he's looking at you.

He sighs, pats your aching head. “Okay, girl,” he says, “Drop it.”

Happy at last, you drop it.

It's a dog's life.



Next week's prompt: We had differing agendas.

(To see the rules, go here.)

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

More Brain Games

Someone at work sent me this link, and we haven't played any brain games in a while, so....

1) How many of the 100 most commonly used words in the English language can you name in 12 minutes? (My score: 65).

2) How many of these 16 words with double-e's (ee) can you come up with in 4 minutes? (My score: 13)

3) How many of these 26 musicals can you name in 7 minutes? (My score: 24*)

4) How many of these 20 phrases that feature the number "3" can you identify in 5 minutes? (My score: 16)

5) How many of the "7 Words You Can't Say on Television" can you identify in 1 minute? (My score: 7*)

*Note that my areas of strength are Broadway musicals and profanity. Just think of the showtunes I could write.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Geriatric Sex

Now that Old Dog and I are aging, more and more we find ourselves gravitating towards oral sex.

As he passes me in the hallway, he says, “Fuck you, old woman.”

I respond, “Fuck you, old man.”

Because what you do is not important, only that it's mutually satisfying.

Friday, June 12, 2009

Fiction Friday: Point of View, This Week's Winner and Prompt VII

Today, as promised (threatened?) I’m going to talk a little about point-of-view.

Point of view is the perspective from which a story is told. There are tons of essays and books on this topic, which can be very complex, but we’re going to limit this discussion to the four most common options:

1) First person – “I” or “We” Examples:
 “My name was Salmon, like the fish, first name Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered….” The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold
 "To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born...." David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens.
A lot of literary fiction and detective novels are written in the first person point of view, as are some romances.

2) Second person – “You” Example:
 “You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning.” Bright Lights, Big City, by Jay McInerney

3) Third person inner limited (aka “close third person”) "He/She/They" The narrator of the story tells the story from a single character’s point of view and shares the thoughts and emotions of that character, very much like the first person, but using the character’s name and “he/she” instead of “I.” Although the POV character may shift, we only learn the thoughts/emotions of a single character within a given scene. Example:
 “The shadow was still there, dark and dreadful. Calvin held her hand strongly in his, but she felt neither strength nor reassurance in his touch. Beside her, a tremor went through Charles Wallace, but he sat very still.” A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle
In this children’s classic, the protagonist, Meg Murry, is the only point-of-view character. Here she shares the reactions of both Calvin and Charles Wallace, but only based on what she can observe.

4) Third person unlimited (aka “omniscient”) "He/She/They" The narrator is god-like, and knows the thoughts and feelings of all the characters. Example:
 “The Queen loved soup. And because the Queen loved soup, it was served in the castle for every banquet, every lunch and every dinner. And what soup it was! Cook’s love and admiration for the Queen and her palate moved the broth that she concocted from the level of mere food to high art.” The Tale of Despereaux, by Kate DiCamillo.
Within the space of a few sentences, we know how the Queen feels about soup, and how Cook feels about the Queen.

Certain techniques are well-suited to certain genres. For example, third person limited works well for suspense/mystery, because you can use it to hide information simply by having a character who doesn’t know the mystery-solving information tell a certain part of the story. Omniscient is useful when you want to control the reader’s perceptions of your characters because it lets you share, not just bad things they do, but bad things they think and feel.

One of the surest signs of an amateur writer is what’s called point-of-view slippage. This is where 90% of your story is written from a single character’s point of view and then you suddenly share what another character is thinking or feeling. This is one of the things that a writing support group is really good for, because it’s really tough to recognize this in your own writing

Another point-of-view failure is what’s known as “head-hopping,” which is sharing the thoughts and feelings of multiple characters within a given scene. I’ve never fully understood how this differs from omniscient, so I just stay away from both of them.

This Week’s Winner

Okay, you guys are killing me. Seriously.

Every week, the entries get stronger, and every week it’s harder to choose a winner. If I cry craven and weenie out of this at some point in the future, you’ll have only yourselves to blame for making it so tough on me. (On the other hand, you’re creating fantastic reading for anyone who bops by.)

This week, the palm goes to Steven G. because he managed to pull off a really great twist. His story starts out mildly pornographic and winds up Mutual of Omaha. Too funny.

Honeymoon

Oh God, the smell of her breath was pure sex, he thought.

After the wedding, she was finally his. He was skinny, she was full figured, and he pounded her like there was no tomorrow!

After finishing, she laughed, “I’m fucking hungry!”

“Wow, she thinks like a MAN,” he thought.

Suddenly her mouth crushed his esophagus. She ripped into his stomach and slurped out his breakfast. Then she preened herself and fell asleep.

Behind the glass, Ernie, the night watchman at the Cincinnati Zoo, said out loud, “Damn, that female Praying Mantis is one cold bitch!”

(Note, if you read the essay above on point-of-view, then you know that this piece is written in Third Person Limited. Although there are two point of view characters, the male mantis and the zookeeper, they are in separate scenes. What separates the scenes is the distance of the “camera” from the action. The first scene is a close-up of the mantises having sex, and the second is shot from behind the glass, where our voyeur zookeeper is watching. This piece could have been written with a single POV character (the zookeeper) but the viewer/reader would likely have wound up feeling manipulated (as they do when watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and deliberately misled. So, well done, Steven G.!)


The Rules:

The (strictly enforced) rules are:

1) Has to be 100 words or less, including the prompt and the title, if any. (I copy them into Word, then go to File/Properties/Statistics to verify the word count. If you don't have Word, there is wordcount freeware available on the Web.)
2) Has to be a story -- that is, the protagonist must undergo some kind of change.
3) Has to use the prompt verbatim
4) Has to be posted as a comment on The Raisin Chronicles Fiction Friday post by midnight the following Wednesday, Eastern Daylight Time.
5) First post by a given writer will be considered his or her entry (so don't delete your entry because of a typo).
4) Decision of the judge is both arbitrary and final.

Next week’s prompt:

You never meant this to happen.

Monday, June 8, 2009

Where Hope Lies Buried

I don't know what happens to dreams deferred, but I think I've got a line on where Hope is buried:



At Homeless Park at the corner of Main and Vine in Dayton, Ohio.

At least, that's where I saw the headstone.

Friday, June 5, 2009

Fiction Friday: Tangles De-tangled, This Week's Winner, and Prompt VI

Thanks to everyone who read "Tangles." I got a lot of good insight, including some great feedback from Jim and Ian on ways to improve the story. So, many thanks!

From my viewpoint, the reason Melissa didn’t take the shampoo was because, after seeing Tina watch her husband hit on someone right in front of her, she realizes that Tina sent her to Kevin’s shop knowing full well that he’d make a pass at her. And, after Tina’s watching her cry over her husband dumping her for the past year, Tina knew Melissa was in a fragile state. So she feels like she was kind of thrown at Kevin like raw meat, to distract him from other prey, like Katherine, who might represent more of a threat to Tina.

But the cool thing is, if that’s not what you got out of it, then your version was about something different. Because it’s only when the written words are interpreted that the story is complete. And each reader translates it differently.

Like many writers, I started out over-describing things, because I wanted to be sure that the reader saw MY vision. Over time, I’ve grown more comfortable just sketching in the outline and allowing the reader to fill it in. The fiction classes I’ve taken say it’s important to do this, because, if the reader isn’t asked to participate in this way, she won’t really connect with the story.

It wasn’t until I wrote "Tangles" that I really understood how true that is. Because I found that, no matter how direct I was about why Melissa refused to take the shampoo, every reader still had his own theory. I shared one draft where, in the final scene, Melissa thinks to herself, “I’m not taking this shampoo because I resent the fact that Tina sent me to her husband’s shop knowing how fragile my emotional state was and knowing that her husband would probably hit on me.” And still, when I’d ask, “Why wouldn’t Melissa take the shampoo?” most people would answer, “Guilt.”

Okay, enough of me yammering on about something you’ll have to learn for yourself anyway.

There were 6 entries in this week’s contest and I would have been comfortable choosing any one of them as the winner. Each had an interesting twist and was strong in its own way. In the end, I chose Jim Styro's because it was funny (and I love funny) and because it was grammatical, correctly spelled, had good punctuation and a single, solid point of view. (We’ll talk a little about POV next week. It’s an important concept in fiction writing, and one you don't learn much about until you reached advanced writing classes.)

Homeland Insecurity

As neighbors go, the Canadians seemed like all we could hope for: distracted, docile and dumb.

Until the Great Hockey War of 2013.

Some say it was the Red Wings’ seventh straight Stanley Cup victory that set them off. Others think it was Obama’s health care plan making theirs look so feeble. Whatever the reason, Homeland Security was completely unprepared for an attack from the Great White North.

Once Buffalo, Detroit and Seattle fell, defeat was inevitable. Who knew they had turned hockey pucks into incendiary devices? It was devastating.

But…now we have pretty money.


Next week’s prompt: Oh God, the smell….

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

GI Joe Meets Rosie the Riveter

Today would have been my dad’s 95th birthday, so it seems like a good opportunity to tell the story of how my parents met.

If you read War Stories the other day, you know that Dad served in Afghanistan and Burma during WWII. In early 1943, following his medical discharge, he returned to Dayton, Ohio, where his folks were living. By shucking the back brace he was supposed to wear, he reclaimed his job as second-shift supervisor at United Aircraft.

I once saw a copy of the UA newsletter welcoming him back. It contained a picture of him, looking impossibly young, his skinny butt parked on an Army-surplus desk, wearing the cockiest grin you’ve ever seen. Every able-bodied male between the ages of 18 and 40 was overseas at the time, and here he was, a 30-year-old war hero. The women were lined up for blocks.

Into this male fantasy stepped my mom. Her family had just relocated to Dayton from Kentucky following the death of my grandfather. Grandma ran a boarding house while Mom and my Aunt Dortha worked as waitresses at the Green Mill Restaurant. Aunt Dortha has great memories of working there together, flirting with the customers and earning their first wages, but there were three younger kids at home, so when a factory job that paid better came along, Mom took it.

She was 22 years old then, and she once told me, “I thought I was the cutest thing in shoe leather.” Selective about whom she dated, she quickly acquired a reputation for being stuck on herself.

No way could Dad resist that challenge.

One afternoon at the start of her shift, as she was walking through the factory to her press, he stepped out in front of her, forcing her to a stop.

“How’d you like to go out with me on Friday?” he said. Before she could refuse, he snapped his fingers. “Oh, wait. I’m busy on Friday.” And as everyone hollered with laughter and Mom’s face flamed, he sauntered away.

The next day, he repeated the trick. “How about a movie on Saturday? Oh, that’s right, I already have a date.” Even more people had gathered to watch Miss High-and-Mighty get her come-uppance, so the roars of laughter were even louder.

The third time he tried it, though, she was ready for him. As soon as he said, “How about having dinner with me?” she instantly said, “Yes.”

One hour into that date, they got into a fight and she made him take her home.

That was in mid-April, and they repeated that pattern – go out, fight like wildcats, take her home early, until they married, six weeks later.



A choice bit of wisdom she passed on to us from her first year of marriage was, “No matter how mad you are, don’t throw spaghetti at your husband. It’s too hard to clean off the wall.”

They remained married – fighting and loving – for over 30 years, until Mom passed away. Although my dad was a widower for nearly as long as he was a husband, he never remarried because, he said, there was no one else like my mom.

I think that knife cut both ways.

Monday, June 1, 2009

Blogger Beware! The Outdoor Room Scam

(Note: This is the first in what I hope will be a series of informative posts about various scam, cons and cheats that are making the arounds. My hope is that, through sharing my experiences, I can spare you some of the pain I’ve endured.) Every year, through the long, cold, gray months of Ohio winter, I dream of spring, and the opportunity to be outdoors again. I pore over women’s magazines, where cottage gardens and tiki-torch lighted patios feed my fantasy life. In recent years, one of the big draws for me has been the “outdoor room.” This is a space adjacent to your house that you furnish, embellish with plantings and light for mood so that you can relax in comfort and elegance. In pursuit of this dream, I now have a furnished patio, a furnished porch, and a semi-furnished deck. But do I relax in comfort and elegance? NO! Because what I actually have is THREE MORE FREAKING ROOMS TO CLEAN!Rooms which, by the way, don’t have walls and windows to keep out dirt, so they pretty much have to be de-grimed every time you want to use them. Not to mention that birds seem to believe that each and every one was designed as their personal potty! So, Blogger Beware! Don’t buy into the “outdoor room.” It’s a total scam.

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails