Oh, the Places You Won’t Go

Two of our kids are on spring break, and two aren’t. Which means no vacation. It means we stay home, instead of visiting friends (Darren and Maggie, we’ll be by in August). But I can’t let an opportunity pass.  Luke + Ariel + vacation = slave labor.

Luke is the official dissection director. I did enough dissection in high school and college, plus I did dissection with Luke and Ariel. Now Luke is the teacher. He’s on his second student, Matthew. Apparently it’s going quite well and Matt is taking pictures of all the organs. EUW. 

Ariel is my spring break cruise director. She insists that I do fun stuff even though I’m not on vacation. She highlighted my hair. I did hers. I discovered that they give you those plastic gloves for a reason. At first my fingertips turned white. Eventually the color came back. But now they’re slippery. And I find myself wondering if you could use a peroxide-based chemical cocktail to “burn” the fingerprints off your fingers... Imagine.

Federal agent 1: Hmm, no fingerprints here. But there are traces of hydrogen peroxide, potassium persulfate, and sodium metasilicate.*

Federal agent 2: Sir, this must be the work of the nefarious highlighting terrorist.

Federal agent 1: Let’s stake out the nearest drugstore.

Of course, I have more plans for tomorrow. The bathroom ceiling needs to be sanded and repainted. (Note to Luke—this means me and you.) The only problem with this is that the ceiling is at least ten feet high. And our ladder won’t fit in the bathroom. So I’ll probably stack pieces of furniture on top of each other until I can reach the ceiling. At which point, Luke will explain to me why I am taking ridiculous chances. I will explain that it doesn’t matter because I have really good balance. Luke will say, “Does Dad know that you’re doing this?” And I will say, “Hey, Dad’s the one who does wiring without turning off the electricity.” Luke will sigh heavily and wonder how he can be the offspring of two such parents. But he’ll help me anyway.

I’m not sure what else Ariel has planned, but I’m sure it involves chocolate chip cookies, lattes with whipped cream, and dark chocolate. Which just goes to show you that you don’t need to go anywhere to have a perfect spring break.

* (I have no idea what that means. I just copied it off the box.)

Give Me Your Cup and No One Gets Hurt

My name is Connie, and I’m a gardener. I bought my first plant 25 years ago, and I can’t stop. Seriously. Only this year, I’m doing seeds instead of plants. Cheaper. Definitely not easier. I’ve done seeds before so I know what I’m talking about.

Here’s the thing. The only way it’s cheaper is if you don’t spend money on fancy seed starters like peat pots, etc. Yeah, I covet them, and they’re easier. But we’re doing cheaper. That means I need cups to plant the seeds in. And since I’m not buying them, it means I need to mooch them. Providentially, our church had a luncheon yesterday. After the luncheon, I went dumpster diving. Okay, not too literally, I only picked a few cups out of the trashcans. Most cups I grabbed just as people were throwing them into the trashcan. It went something like this.

Me: Can I have that cup, please?

Person 1: Uh, sure...

Me: I want to reuse the cup (scoring points for environmental consciousness) to plant my garden seeds.

Person 1 (realizing that I’m not a lunatic): Right, okay.

But not all my experiences were quite so straightforward.

Me: Can I have that cup, please? I want to reuse it. (I was trying to cut down on odd facial responses.)

Person 2: Oh. (He looks at the Styrofoam cup oddly.)

Me (wondering why I’m still getting odd looks): I’m going to plant seeds in it for my flower garden.

Person 2 (laughing): I thought you wanted to wash it in order to use it again for the next luncheon.  I thought it was your Dutchness coming out.

Me (smiling, not offended at the reference to pecuniary Dutchness because said person’s wife is also Dutch): No, no. I don’t think I’d do that. (Maybe I would at home with my kids. But not with other people—they’d have non-family germs.)

So I brought my used Styrofoam cups home. And proceeded to say, “Ariel, let’s soak the seeds!” She gives me a languid look and says, “I don’t know why you think that I’m excited about this.” My shoulders droop. Ariel then remembers all the times that I’ve pretended to be interested in some obscure matrix theory and says, “Okay, fine.”

She watches while I label the cups, pour in the seeds, and add water. Her contribution to the process beyond watching is to say, “Euw! Those hollyhock seeds look like fleas!” Indignant, I say, “They do NOT look like fleas. Fleas are much smaller.” At that, Ariel gives me her triumphant look. I grumble. Then she announces that when she gets a home of her own, she’s going to hire me to do her gardening. I think that I’m going to be way too expensive for her to hire. She can pull her own weeds. 

I Love My Platypus

I didn’t make it too far into the literary agency contest.  They told me that “my manuscript didn’t meet their needs at this time.” And they told me that I was welcome to query other projects to their agency. Pretty much your tier one standard rejection. (Not good, but better than “don’t darken our doorstep again, you ignorant hack.”)

I was very disappointed. I wasn’t planning on making it to the “end” of the contest. After all, my book is very different than what they represent. But I’d hoped that I’d at least make it to the next level. What I forgot is that they are a business. They are looking for novels that fit their selling niche. For example, some agencies represent science fiction and fantasy. And no matter how beautifully written your romantic thriller is, they’ll turn it down in the time it takes you to blink.

My novel is historical fiction with pretentions to literary fiction. I called it “women’s fiction,” which the agency does represent. But clearly they didn’t buy it—if it doesn’t walk like a duck or talk like a duck, it’s probably not a duck. And though my book had a duck bill (i.e., it was about a woman) my book is more like a platypus and sticking a bunch of feathers on it (calling it “women’s fiction”) didn’t fool the agents.

So I have to get off my duff, write the query and the synopsis, and find someone who earnestly loves to represent platypuses with waddles.

(Don’t you think the plural of platypus ought to be platypi?)

Angst

The next few blogs posts may be shorter than normal. I’m in a contest for literary representation. Though truthfully whenever you’re trying to get a literary agent that’s always the case. But this is a special case for a lot of reasons. First the whole thing will be over by the end of the month—instead of the passing months multiplying like rabbits. Second, you don’t have to submit a query letter or a synopsis. (I’m doing the happy dance in my fuzzy socks.) Especially since I haven’t written either one yet. Imagine how cool it would be to land an agent without having had to write them.

Of course, now I’ve decided that the entire novel needs to be read-through one more time. Just in case. So I started. At first it went really well. Then, hyper-anxiety found me.  And any reliable read of my material went out the door. I started wondering if it was all drivel. Now I know what you’re thinking—are all writers such narcissist navel gazers? The answer is yes. But it’s not quite our fault. I was reading the blog of a famous agent who’s also a writer. She’s known for her razor-sharp editing skills and keen nose for greatness. What was she blogging about? The latest crit feedback she got on her work-in-progress. All the plot holes, rotten dialogue, etc.

On the one hand, it’s encouraging. Okay, I can be a writer and have editing angst. If one of the best struggles with editing her work, then it’s all right if I do too.

However, if she can’t always spot her mistakes, what does that say about me? See, now I’m back to the drivel thing.

Where does that leave me? I’m not sure. But I’m not going to wallow in a pity puddle (sorry, I couldn’t resist the alliteration). Instead, I’m “putting on my big girl panties” and picking up my red pen. 

Not the Usual Reasons

I’m not much of a television person. And it’s not because the tv shows are puerile, offensive, or boring—though sometimes they are. I get frustrated even with tv shows that aren’t. My biggest beef with tv shows is the characters. The characters almost never grow. That’s what I love about books and movies. By the end, a resolution has occurred and a character grows. But tv series by their continuing nature can’t do that.

For example, I enjoy the show Castle (it’s about a mystery writer who falls in love with a NYC detective). The show is mostly about solving the murders. But the background is Rick Castle’s love for Kate Beckett and hers for him. Except that they never get beyond their own foibles that keep them apart. Despite the fact that Rick realizes that Kate is his soul mate, he can’t get beyond his philandering ways, which turns off Kate who wants a real lifetime relationship. Now, of course, this may be real life, but in a story I want to see the characters redeemed or, at least, resolved to be separate. But in the constant back-and-forth of their relationship I feel like I’m being “led down the garden path.” I’m not sure there’s any way around it; after all, when the tension between Kate and Rick is gone, where does it leave the story? Though I have some ideas on how to advance the characters and still maintain the tension (call me ABC), but that’s another story.

Maintaining the tension and advancing the characters’ growth is the double edged sword for tv shows. Some shows try to get around it by having their characters do exciting/growing things, but then those choices never change the relationships around them. Their actions have no consequences, either good or bad. And I hate that even more.

There have been notable exceptions like the show Kidnapped in which a child is kidnapped in the first episode and the rest of the season is devoted to finding the child and discovering why he was kidnapped. Of course, the characters who search for the child don’t do much growing, but then the writers had expected the show to continue beyond one season, which didn’t happen (BTW, Netflix carries the show.)

I think part of the reason for the success of detective series beyond the “idea of justice” and “the modern realization of the quest genre,” is that most episodes have closure with a denouement and resolution.

Or am I overthinking it? Or maybe I just haven’t seen any good shows. Any thoughts or shows that you’d like to share, readers?

Ultimate Secrets and Honesty

My son Luke is the ultimate secret keeper. If he doesn’t think he’s supposed to say something, he doesn’t. And there’s not even a hint of it on his face.

So when Luke said that something interesting happened last week, we listened.

Two bits of salient information: One, Luke is a teaching assistant in a chemistry lab at the university he attends. Two, Luke is scrupulously, painfully honest. If you ask him, “Does this skirt make me look fat?” and he thinks it does, he’ll say, “Yes, that skirt makes you look fat.” Luke hates dishonesty, even if it’s “polite.”

So last week, he was helping to oversee a midterm and noticed that a student was cheating. The student had a list of formulae on an index card slipped between his calculator and the calculator “slide.”

Luke reported it to the professor that runs the lab. The prof was a bit hesitant about doing anything immediately. The student had to be caught red-handed, documentation, etc. Luke continued to keep his eye on the student, who continued cheating. At one point, the student went to the professor’s desk to ask a question. Then, Luke grabbed the student’s calculator (everyone has their name on their calculator because they are so expensive), took it to the front of the room, slapped it on the prof’s desk, and pulled back the slide (revealing the crib note), and said to the student, “How do you explain this?”

The student came up with a lame excuse—the head professor gave him permission. The lab professor checked with the head professor, who had NOT given the student permission to cheat. Luke ended up being interviewed by the head professor. And the student was disciplined and had to go to the honor board.

At any rate, it became public today. And professors are now checking everyone’s calculator slide for cheat sheets during midterms.

But what amazes me is that while all this was going on last week, Luke never said a thing. Not one word. Now I wish I had some wonderful, amazing secret so I could tell Luke. But I don’t.

And the moral of the story is don’t cheat and don’t ask Luke if a particular skirt makes you look fat.

My Early Warning System

I’m almost done with the current revision of my heart novel. I edited, revised, and reread two chapters yesterday. That leaves the climax chapter, which is really long and needs to be split in two, and the denoument (resolution) chapter. I started working on the climax yesterday, noticing that the main character had an emotional swing that while justified isn’t accounted for in the text. So I started to add details to the text to account for the character’s emotional transition.

It went well, until I realized it was drivel. After editing for a while, I reached the creative-insight endpoint and descended into hokey overwrought tripe. I’m sure I’m not the only writer who experiences this. How about you all? How do you realize when you’ve burned through your creative stores for the day? I’d like to know the warning signs so that I can “back way from the novel” before I destroy something good.

I’m considering adding Ellie, my daughter’s hamster, to my early warning system. She seems to befairly talented. Here’s a picture of her reading the text.

Here's another picture of her typing out, “Stop, you crazed woman, you’re ruining the chapter.”