The last time I saw Selma Gray the hot noon sun was reflecting in her dreadlocked hair and the bright colors of her dress. The last time I saw Selma Gray she was standing barefoot on the cement in front of the passport building. The last time I saw Selma Gray she was smiling. I had noticed all of these things and I stopped to talk to her, imagining that she would have something interesting to say.
She was going to Panama. “I’m going to Panama,” she told me.
“Oh,” I responded.
Selma bent her leg up and dug her toes into the soil of a potted tree behind her. “Yeah,” she said as though I’d never even spoken. “We’re having a problem getting passports, though. They won’t let you in without shoes.”
She jerked her thumb towards a sign on the building next to her. I nodded. “Real bummer,” she said as she pulled her left foot out of the dirt and placed the right one in its place. “My boyfriend ran across the street to get me some flip-flops. I’m not allowed in there either.”
Selma lifted her chin and shook her head. “Things are going to be different in Panama. We’re going to live off the land be done with all this shoe-wearing commercialism.”
“How long will you be gone?” I asked.
Selma placed both her feet on the ground and brought her chin down so that she could look me directly in the eyes. “Forever, man. Forever.”
Selma’s boyfriend ran up then, toting a pair of seafoam green flip-flops. As Selma put them on her feet I made an excuse and turned to leave. At the street corner I looked back. The last time I saw Selma Gray she was putting her foot into a seafoam green flip-flop with one hand, and balancing herself against her boyfriend with the other.
That was the last time. This time, a mere three months later, Selma is standing so the doorway surrounds her like a box. Sunlight does not reflect in her dreads. They have been chopped off. Sunlight does not reflect off her bright clothing, her clothing is all gray. She is not smiling. “I heard you were sick,” she says. An odd remark coming from someone who I was never particularly close to.
This story is one that I was really focused on for a long time and I actually did finish it, but I don’t think that it came out the way that I wanted it. The final product was taken down by my own perfectionism. It was a long time ago and I’m sure that if I went through my notebooks I would be able to find the whole story, but I don’t have it all typed up and written down somewhere.
One of the main characters in this story, Selma, was based on someone that I knew. She had a different kind of life than I did and I was really jealous of it. I was also bitter about the fact that she could live in a different way than I could. I didn’t understand why she could live her life with so much freedom when I felt so completely trapped by the things around me. I wrote her into this story and made her a rather pathetic character.
I wanted to point out that even though she was free in some ways it was all bullshit. In my mind at the time, she was living in a way that just wasn’t sustainable. I thought that no one could live life in that way forever. I made her character rude and presumptuous. I wanted her to be unlikeable.
I’ve changed a lot since I wrote this story. I still know the girl that Selma was based on. She’s still living the kind of life that I could be jealous of, though she has calmed down quite a bit since the time when she was running off to live in a South American country. The truth is that she was always a really nice person and she still is. I was simply bitter and jealous that I couldn’t live the life that she could live. I didn’t feel as free as she felt.
The point is, when you’re jealous as a writer, you can make horrible things happen to the people that you are jealous of. I made something horrible happen to her in this story. I had all her illusions shattered. I have other stories that I’ve written where I let my jealousy take over and some of them are actually pretty good. All emotions are helpful when it comes to writing.
I don’t really worry about letting jealousy affect me in this way, because it’s not like I’m acting with blatant bitterness towards the people I’m jealous of. It’s more secondary and I find that it is helpful. It lets me work through a lot of different things that I’m trying to work through and it makes me feel better. It’s not just jealousy that comes through in my writing. If I really don’t like someone, I’ll write them into a story and make their life end up horribly or have them lose a limb or have everyone hate them or see them for what they truly are.
When I get my feelings out in my writing, it doesn’t hurt anyone and I end up coming out with some really good stories. That’s using emotions in a positive way.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Interruptions 11/25/08
He did not mean for it to happen. No one means for things like this to happen, but they do. It was a mistake, Fletcher would try to tell himself. Mistakes happen and this is just the way things are. He would not feel guilty and yet he did. He felt guilty. He felt guilt pressing outward against his rib cage. Guilt wanting to rip him apart. Guilt making him explode. It was a beautiful day. Winter was threatening but had not some yet. The streets were cluttered with the gold of recently fallen leaves. It was cold. Cold enough for her to be wearing a woolen cap. He did not know her, did not know her name, but he could tell you about that cap if you asked. He hopes that no one asks. It was blue, a dark blue nearer to indigo and it had a yellow trim. All over, in random spots, there were yellow stars. She was wearing the night sky right there on her head.
Fletcher liked it and he was in such a good mood and she was so pretty, coming towards him on her bit, smiling. As she approached him, and it seemed like she was so far away, he yelled out, “I like your hat.” She teeters with laughter as she came towards him. “Thanks!” she shouted as she passed him smiling, and she kept her eyes on him, so Fletcher did the same to her. She must have seen the smile disappear from his face. She must have seen him turn white because her own face became serious and she turned her head to look forward, but it was too late. She could not be saved.
Did she yell out? Fletcher could not remember, but he is certain that there must have been some noise other than the sound of metal against skin, metal, cloth, the ground. And there must be something other than the sound of spokes clanging against the pavement. The sound of a tire spinning endlessly into the air. There must have been something else? Was it him? Fletcher could not remember. Did he let out a strangled, high pitched sound reflective of the fear he felt. She was on the ground, her limbs askew, the cap still on her head. Maybe you could imagine her as simply sleeping, as though people always fell asleep in the middle of the roads.
It was the driver’s fault, making a left hand turn into a girl on a bike. The driver is out of her car now, her hand still holding her phone up to her ear. She is saying, “I hit something. Oh, God. Oh, God. I hit someone. I hit someone. Oh, God.”
Fletcher asks her, “Is that 911? Did you call the police?”
The driver, on her phone looks at him, bewildered. “What? Oh, God, I hit someone.”
“Is that the police?” Fletcher asks and he points at the phone.
The driver shakes her head. “I have to call the police. The police. Is she dead? Oh, God, I hit someone. I killed someone.”
The thought did not cross Fletcher’s mind until this moment. The girl in the hat could be dead. She could be dead even if it looks like she is sleeping, with limbs spread out, on the pavement. “Call the police,” he tells the driver before going to the woman on the pavement.
There is blood on her hat. That is the first thing that he notices. It is seeping from the inside out, blacking out stars. The night sky in a certain area is dark. He knows he should not try to move her. He leans into her and puts two fingers up to her neck, checking her pulse. It is light, but it is there.
I like this story. It is crammed into a notebook that was full of two other major projects. One comes before it and the other comes after it. The truth about this story is that it got forgotten because the day after I wrote it something very serious and very big happened in my life. It was something that I couldn’t ignore. It was something that I couldn’t even understand and when things that big happen to me I have to write them out in a way that makes sense to me.
So this story got pushed to the side because of a big event that I needed to understand. The story that came out of that event was actually pretty good, but very personal, and so it’s not something that I like exploring or looking over. This story, this little moment before the other event, really is something that I should look into again. I like it.
The story came out of an experience that I had one day. I live in a town where it’s really easy to get around on my bike and so because of this, I ride it a lot. I’ve also learned that there are a number of people who want to kill me because I am on a bike. Actually, I think I’ve only had one run in with someone who seemed to actually want to kill me. The other people were all just really bad drivers. There are a lot of people who need to pay a little more attention when they are on the road. People on bikes actually do have the right of way which means that you shouldn’t make left hand turns into them. However, there have been a lot of times where I’ve almost been killed by someone making a left hand turn. Once, it was so close that about four people who were on the sidewalks around me actually screamed in fear. The driver that almost hit me was on the phone. Typically, if I almost get hit, the drivers are on the phone.
So one day, I was riding my bike to work and what happened in the beginning of this story happened to me. Someone complemented me on my hat and I was distracted and I turned to find someone trying to make a left hand turn into me. Fortunately, I was able to stop in time and make the appropriate WTF face at the driver. This story was born out of the simple idea that if I didn’t that poor nice guy who was just trying to complement my hat would probably feel really guilty but it would have been the driver’s fault completely. The driver wouldn’t feel guilty, of course, because people on their phones are too distracted to feel guilty. Plus, the guilt of the innocent bystander is much more interesting of a topic.
It’s too bad that my life got interrupted right after this. I would have liked to have seen where this story went. I might come back to it but now I’m at a different place in my life and my writing. Maybe later.
Fletcher liked it and he was in such a good mood and she was so pretty, coming towards him on her bit, smiling. As she approached him, and it seemed like she was so far away, he yelled out, “I like your hat.” She teeters with laughter as she came towards him. “Thanks!” she shouted as she passed him smiling, and she kept her eyes on him, so Fletcher did the same to her. She must have seen the smile disappear from his face. She must have seen him turn white because her own face became serious and she turned her head to look forward, but it was too late. She could not be saved.
Did she yell out? Fletcher could not remember, but he is certain that there must have been some noise other than the sound of metal against skin, metal, cloth, the ground. And there must be something other than the sound of spokes clanging against the pavement. The sound of a tire spinning endlessly into the air. There must have been something else? Was it him? Fletcher could not remember. Did he let out a strangled, high pitched sound reflective of the fear he felt. She was on the ground, her limbs askew, the cap still on her head. Maybe you could imagine her as simply sleeping, as though people always fell asleep in the middle of the roads.
It was the driver’s fault, making a left hand turn into a girl on a bike. The driver is out of her car now, her hand still holding her phone up to her ear. She is saying, “I hit something. Oh, God. Oh, God. I hit someone. I hit someone. Oh, God.”
Fletcher asks her, “Is that 911? Did you call the police?”
The driver, on her phone looks at him, bewildered. “What? Oh, God, I hit someone.”
“Is that the police?” Fletcher asks and he points at the phone.
The driver shakes her head. “I have to call the police. The police. Is she dead? Oh, God, I hit someone. I killed someone.”
The thought did not cross Fletcher’s mind until this moment. The girl in the hat could be dead. She could be dead even if it looks like she is sleeping, with limbs spread out, on the pavement. “Call the police,” he tells the driver before going to the woman on the pavement.
There is blood on her hat. That is the first thing that he notices. It is seeping from the inside out, blacking out stars. The night sky in a certain area is dark. He knows he should not try to move her. He leans into her and puts two fingers up to her neck, checking her pulse. It is light, but it is there.
I like this story. It is crammed into a notebook that was full of two other major projects. One comes before it and the other comes after it. The truth about this story is that it got forgotten because the day after I wrote it something very serious and very big happened in my life. It was something that I couldn’t ignore. It was something that I couldn’t even understand and when things that big happen to me I have to write them out in a way that makes sense to me.
So this story got pushed to the side because of a big event that I needed to understand. The story that came out of that event was actually pretty good, but very personal, and so it’s not something that I like exploring or looking over. This story, this little moment before the other event, really is something that I should look into again. I like it.
The story came out of an experience that I had one day. I live in a town where it’s really easy to get around on my bike and so because of this, I ride it a lot. I’ve also learned that there are a number of people who want to kill me because I am on a bike. Actually, I think I’ve only had one run in with someone who seemed to actually want to kill me. The other people were all just really bad drivers. There are a lot of people who need to pay a little more attention when they are on the road. People on bikes actually do have the right of way which means that you shouldn’t make left hand turns into them. However, there have been a lot of times where I’ve almost been killed by someone making a left hand turn. Once, it was so close that about four people who were on the sidewalks around me actually screamed in fear. The driver that almost hit me was on the phone. Typically, if I almost get hit, the drivers are on the phone.
So one day, I was riding my bike to work and what happened in the beginning of this story happened to me. Someone complemented me on my hat and I was distracted and I turned to find someone trying to make a left hand turn into me. Fortunately, I was able to stop in time and make the appropriate WTF face at the driver. This story was born out of the simple idea that if I didn’t that poor nice guy who was just trying to complement my hat would probably feel really guilty but it would have been the driver’s fault completely. The driver wouldn’t feel guilty, of course, because people on their phones are too distracted to feel guilty. Plus, the guilt of the innocent bystander is much more interesting of a topic.
It’s too bad that my life got interrupted right after this. I would have liked to have seen where this story went. I might come back to it but now I’m at a different place in my life and my writing. Maybe later.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Changing One Word 1/25/08
I left the letter on the kitchen counter. I had covered it in flour and was tracing new letters over it with my finger. Odd behavior, I know, but my own logic was twisted up in my actions. Maybe it is something I could explain to you, if I ever get the chance. I am all out of chances.
I was standing over your letter, tracing you a new one when it happened. I had the perfect view, from where I was, of the door as it swung open. It wasn’t as dramatic as I always imagined it would be. I had left the door unlocked, a completely accidental error in my judgment. It meant that there was no kicking down of the door. Nor was there a clever scheme that involved a lost child or some other made up thing designed to make me open the door. I heard an odd bump and looked up to see my door swinging open.
He was scrawny, not strong or thick in any way. I had always imagined that if this sort of thing happened, he would be strong. He would be the kind of big man who could overtake me with a look. The man in front of me was not the man that I imagined. He looked young. Younger than me. He could not grow a real moustache, though it was apparent that he had tried. I saw him and I wasn’t even scared. I was surprised. There is a difference, or maybe there was right then. I almost opened my mouth to speak, maybe to ask him if I could help him in some way. Then I saw the gun.
My palm fell flat onto the flour. No more letters over letters. Just a handprint surrounded by scribbles. A gun. A gun. He had it pointed at my head. I didn’t really even know what to do. My thoughts swam in desperation. Then I went blank. There was nothing left to think. Nothing to think about.
This is the beginning of a story I wrote that was basically all about how much I love my words and how much I love writing. It was a strange story and I wrote it at the very beginning of this period where I started writing a lot more than I had been writing before. I think that because I was out of practice it didn’t turn out very good. It certainly didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped that it would.
The story centers around this main character, the first person narrator. She is desperately in love with someone that she can’t have or who perhaps doesn’t want her, so she wrote him a letter. What happens in the story is that these guys come into her house, tie her up, and deposit her in the bathroom. Then they start looking around and they find the letter. Instead of just leaving it where it is, one of the guys takes it and makes her read it aloud as if she wrote it for him. He makes her write a new version of the letter, replacing only her former lover’s name with his. After she has done this he points the gun at her and makes her tell him that she loves him. These two acts take away all the power of the letter.
The thief leaves without taking any of the things that thieves are known to take, such as televisions and DVD players. The only thing he takes from her is this new letter, the one that he had her write his name into. She doesn’t want the old one anymore. It has been tainted. After she calls the police she sits down to have a cigarette. It is her first cigarette since the letter’s original intended recipient told her that he could never date a smoker. When the thief took the letter, he took away all hope of her ever getting her ex-lover back as well.
That explanation makes it seems very complicated and maybe it is. Like I said, I wrote this after a period when I hadn’t been doing very much writing, so I was out of practice. Anyway, this piece meant two things for me. First, it taught me that I need to write on a regular basis or else my stories come out all mushy. Second, it made me really think about the power that I give to my words and how crappy I feel when other people take them and switch all the meanings around. When she writes the new letter for the thief she only changes one thing, but that one thing is the one thing that makes all the difference. I think that I will always worry about people changing my words around. It won’t be the same as it is in this story. I don’t think that anyone is going to break into my house and steal my notebooks and make me change words so that things are all about them. I think that my fear is that people won’t understand what it is that I am trying to say and will take things to mean something other than what they are.
I guess that’s just one of the risks that come with my chosen profession. It’s just a hard one for me to swallow.
I was standing over your letter, tracing you a new one when it happened. I had the perfect view, from where I was, of the door as it swung open. It wasn’t as dramatic as I always imagined it would be. I had left the door unlocked, a completely accidental error in my judgment. It meant that there was no kicking down of the door. Nor was there a clever scheme that involved a lost child or some other made up thing designed to make me open the door. I heard an odd bump and looked up to see my door swinging open.
He was scrawny, not strong or thick in any way. I had always imagined that if this sort of thing happened, he would be strong. He would be the kind of big man who could overtake me with a look. The man in front of me was not the man that I imagined. He looked young. Younger than me. He could not grow a real moustache, though it was apparent that he had tried. I saw him and I wasn’t even scared. I was surprised. There is a difference, or maybe there was right then. I almost opened my mouth to speak, maybe to ask him if I could help him in some way. Then I saw the gun.
My palm fell flat onto the flour. No more letters over letters. Just a handprint surrounded by scribbles. A gun. A gun. He had it pointed at my head. I didn’t really even know what to do. My thoughts swam in desperation. Then I went blank. There was nothing left to think. Nothing to think about.
This is the beginning of a story I wrote that was basically all about how much I love my words and how much I love writing. It was a strange story and I wrote it at the very beginning of this period where I started writing a lot more than I had been writing before. I think that because I was out of practice it didn’t turn out very good. It certainly didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped that it would.
The story centers around this main character, the first person narrator. She is desperately in love with someone that she can’t have or who perhaps doesn’t want her, so she wrote him a letter. What happens in the story is that these guys come into her house, tie her up, and deposit her in the bathroom. Then they start looking around and they find the letter. Instead of just leaving it where it is, one of the guys takes it and makes her read it aloud as if she wrote it for him. He makes her write a new version of the letter, replacing only her former lover’s name with his. After she has done this he points the gun at her and makes her tell him that she loves him. These two acts take away all the power of the letter.
The thief leaves without taking any of the things that thieves are known to take, such as televisions and DVD players. The only thing he takes from her is this new letter, the one that he had her write his name into. She doesn’t want the old one anymore. It has been tainted. After she calls the police she sits down to have a cigarette. It is her first cigarette since the letter’s original intended recipient told her that he could never date a smoker. When the thief took the letter, he took away all hope of her ever getting her ex-lover back as well.
That explanation makes it seems very complicated and maybe it is. Like I said, I wrote this after a period when I hadn’t been doing very much writing, so I was out of practice. Anyway, this piece meant two things for me. First, it taught me that I need to write on a regular basis or else my stories come out all mushy. Second, it made me really think about the power that I give to my words and how crappy I feel when other people take them and switch all the meanings around. When she writes the new letter for the thief she only changes one thing, but that one thing is the one thing that makes all the difference. I think that I will always worry about people changing my words around. It won’t be the same as it is in this story. I don’t think that anyone is going to break into my house and steal my notebooks and make me change words so that things are all about them. I think that my fear is that people won’t understand what it is that I am trying to say and will take things to mean something other than what they are.
I guess that’s just one of the risks that come with my chosen profession. It’s just a hard one for me to swallow.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Numbers and Exercises 2/21/06
Someone’s playing the radio on the twenty seventh floor. I have the misfortune of hearing it one the twenty sixth floor. I imagine turning into one of those old cranks who bangs on the ceiling with a broom handle. At twenty five, I am too young to play those games. Instead, I decide to leave. The elevator stops at the twenty fourth floor where I am joined by a pair of elderly women wearing tract suits and weights on their wrists. They chatter aimlessly as we descend. Twenty three floors later we are in the lobby. The women begin speed-walking out of the building as I slowly follow. “Twenty two years of marriage and he just up and leaves her for a younger woman,” one of the ladies says. I hear the other clucking at this comment before I am unable to hear anything else from them.
I wonder about that situation as I walk away. My husband and I were married when we were merely twenty-one. “So young,” my mother had said at the time. “It will never last.” I thanked her for her unwavering support and went ahead with my wedding plans. Mike and I were married on the twentieth of June. The date was convenient because it was the only day the church was free that month. Things have been fairly uneventful since then but these old women had me wondering about the next nineteen years. Would Mike leave me for a younger woman? I found this unlikely as he hadn’t married me for my youth or beauty in the first place, or so I liked to think.
I ponder this for eighteen blocks at which point I relies that I have been walking aimlessly, doing nothing but avoiding the noise that was formerly coming from above me. Seeing as that is not far behind me I take the next few blocks much slower. I have no destination, just a seemingly endless supply of street before me. There is a bookstore at the corner of 17th street and Miller Avenue. I walk inside in hope of sitting down and resting for a while.
Sixteen minutes later I am back on the street. In the bookstore I found a book on the statistics for people who marry young. I grew morose as I flipped through it and quickly left.
Back on the streets I wonder if Mike has the same doubts as I do. It was unlikely seeing as he hadn’t heard the conversation that I had earlier. If he had been there would he have grabbed my hand and given it a light squeeze to reassure me that it would never happen to us?
Us. We. We had met on our fifteenth day of our freshman year at college. He thought it was magic that led me to him. I knew that earlier that night I had had too much to drink and wandered up to the wrong dorm room. When my key didn’t work for the obvious reasons I banged on the door yelling for my roommate to open it. Instead, I got Mike. Half asleep and barely dressed he agreed to let me sleep n his couch in the hopes that I would better recognize my surroundings in the morning.
Ah, numbers. I remember this story coming from a prompt which makes up the first sentence. I think that after that I just started counting down because it was happening fairly naturally after I had come up with the character’s age. I think that I was doing a lot of work out of a book of prompts at this time because I wasn’t writing all that much. I felt very stifled and when I feel stifled I have a difficult time expressing myself. I knew that I needed to write and so I was turning to prompts to help me through it. I still use prompts sometimes because they help me get ideas going when I think that I have none left.
I particularly liked this prompt because it gave me the chance to mix letters and numbers. It was a very interesting idea for me and I thought about expanding it, but I figured that if I were going at the rate that I was going I would have to start at something like 10,000 to get a novel and I couldn’t think of what I would use for 9998 or really any other number before I got down below one hundred. I also don’t like having to rely on devices like this. It would be one thing if I could write a story like this and make it work and make the characters compelling, but I’m not sure that I could. I think I would be too distracted by the act of counting down.
This brings me to an important point. There are a lot of times when I think it would be easier to rely on something other than my characters to move the story forward. I know that there are times when there are things other than my characters involved in the story. While I think that plot is important, I don’t want it to move forward simply for the sake of moving forward. Maybe this is why I don’t write mystery novels. I wouldn’t want the characters to suffer just so that they can solve the mystery. I think sometimes when writers rely on devices and plot they miss out on creating a character arc. I wouldn’t write a story without a plot but I also wouldn’t want to write a story where someone didn’t change something about themselves from the beginning to the end. To me that’s more important. The plot comes out of the character’s desire for something and the character’s need for a change.
I guess my stories are just more character driven. That’s just something that works for me. I like devices such as counting down and if I could ever figure out a way for it to work in a story without the story actually suffering I might use it someday.
I wonder about that situation as I walk away. My husband and I were married when we were merely twenty-one. “So young,” my mother had said at the time. “It will never last.” I thanked her for her unwavering support and went ahead with my wedding plans. Mike and I were married on the twentieth of June. The date was convenient because it was the only day the church was free that month. Things have been fairly uneventful since then but these old women had me wondering about the next nineteen years. Would Mike leave me for a younger woman? I found this unlikely as he hadn’t married me for my youth or beauty in the first place, or so I liked to think.
I ponder this for eighteen blocks at which point I relies that I have been walking aimlessly, doing nothing but avoiding the noise that was formerly coming from above me. Seeing as that is not far behind me I take the next few blocks much slower. I have no destination, just a seemingly endless supply of street before me. There is a bookstore at the corner of 17th street and Miller Avenue. I walk inside in hope of sitting down and resting for a while.
Sixteen minutes later I am back on the street. In the bookstore I found a book on the statistics for people who marry young. I grew morose as I flipped through it and quickly left.
Back on the streets I wonder if Mike has the same doubts as I do. It was unlikely seeing as he hadn’t heard the conversation that I had earlier. If he had been there would he have grabbed my hand and given it a light squeeze to reassure me that it would never happen to us?
Us. We. We had met on our fifteenth day of our freshman year at college. He thought it was magic that led me to him. I knew that earlier that night I had had too much to drink and wandered up to the wrong dorm room. When my key didn’t work for the obvious reasons I banged on the door yelling for my roommate to open it. Instead, I got Mike. Half asleep and barely dressed he agreed to let me sleep n his couch in the hopes that I would better recognize my surroundings in the morning.
Ah, numbers. I remember this story coming from a prompt which makes up the first sentence. I think that after that I just started counting down because it was happening fairly naturally after I had come up with the character’s age. I think that I was doing a lot of work out of a book of prompts at this time because I wasn’t writing all that much. I felt very stifled and when I feel stifled I have a difficult time expressing myself. I knew that I needed to write and so I was turning to prompts to help me through it. I still use prompts sometimes because they help me get ideas going when I think that I have none left.
I particularly liked this prompt because it gave me the chance to mix letters and numbers. It was a very interesting idea for me and I thought about expanding it, but I figured that if I were going at the rate that I was going I would have to start at something like 10,000 to get a novel and I couldn’t think of what I would use for 9998 or really any other number before I got down below one hundred. I also don’t like having to rely on devices like this. It would be one thing if I could write a story like this and make it work and make the characters compelling, but I’m not sure that I could. I think I would be too distracted by the act of counting down.
This brings me to an important point. There are a lot of times when I think it would be easier to rely on something other than my characters to move the story forward. I know that there are times when there are things other than my characters involved in the story. While I think that plot is important, I don’t want it to move forward simply for the sake of moving forward. Maybe this is why I don’t write mystery novels. I wouldn’t want the characters to suffer just so that they can solve the mystery. I think sometimes when writers rely on devices and plot they miss out on creating a character arc. I wouldn’t write a story without a plot but I also wouldn’t want to write a story where someone didn’t change something about themselves from the beginning to the end. To me that’s more important. The plot comes out of the character’s desire for something and the character’s need for a change.
I guess my stories are just more character driven. That’s just something that works for me. I like devices such as counting down and if I could ever figure out a way for it to work in a story without the story actually suffering I might use it someday.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
The Issue of Trust 3/28/01
This wagon is different from most wagons. The sides are wooden panels a foot high. We could remove them if we wanted to, but we don’t want to. The bottom is plain wood. It differs from the sides in the fact that it is not painted bright red. Bryan wheels the wagon into the middle of the street with me right behind him.
“Get in,” he says as we reach the center of the road.
“What?” I say. I’m not going to get in an old wooden wagon aimed down a steep hill.
“Get in,” Bryan says again. He pulls one of the helmets out of the wagon and hands it to me.
“This is so dangerous. I’m not getting in. Let’s go home, Bryan,” I say. I grab his hand and try to drag him back to the house.
“Amma, relax, it’s not that dangerous.” He lets go of my hand and gets the other helmet out of the wagon and slips it on his head. “We have helmets. We’ll be safe.”
I’m still hesitant as I watch him straighten out the wagon so we’ll go straight down.
“Get in,” he says again. I slowly crawl into the wagon. It wobbles whenever my weight shifts.
“Don’t kill me,” I murmur.
“Relax,” Bryan says, “trust me.” He grabs the handle and pushes it back hard against the front of the wagon. “Get back,” he says to me so I scrunch myself into the back panel of the wagon, grateful that Bryan will be in the front.
Bryan gives a slight push and jumps into the wagon. He grabs the handle and pushes it from left to right until we have finally been straightened out. I am hugging myself in the back of the wagon, pulling my knees closer and closer to my body.
“Relax!” Bryan yells to me. His voice seems to stumble with the bumpy road. I close my eyes in a refusal to relax but without sight there is nothing to be afraid of and my entire body calms down. We hit a larger than normal rock and are airborne for one second.
This came out of a story which revolved around the main character (again named Amma) taking a road trip to find someone. Instead of finding the person that she is looking for, she finds a number of other people, including a free spirited young man named Bryan.
My freshman year of college I was doing a lot of things that young people do their freshman year of college. For me, even more so than having the general new experiences, I was making a whole new set of friends. I felt like I had been completely abandoned by the people that I used to know when I got up to University. It wasn’t that they weren’t around. They were. It was just that it had become apparent that we were heading in different directions in our lives. I have always wanted more than to just hang around the same town forever and to start a family right away. I wasn’t working on a career that was conducive to that. It’s not that I don’t think it’s absolutely lovely that they wanted families and that they were working on what they wanted, it just wasn’t for me. I have never wanted the career that I felt half-assed about so that I didn’t feel bad when I quit to have children.
Anyway, I was making new friends and one of them was this wonderful guy named Bryan who had a lovely deep voice and beautiful eyes and who listened to reggae and compared joining fraternities to joining gangs. He skated, which I thought was fantastic because it was something that I always wanted to learn how to do. I thought he was fantastic, so I wrote him into my stories as a person who teaches the main character a lot about herself. The first exercise was an exercise in trust. I think that trusting people is something that I struggle with. I never know who to trust and when I’m supposed to start trusting them. Should I trust that most people are good right away, or should I hang back and watch? I made the character of Amma the same way. She was worried about trusting people and then she goes on this fantastic cross country adventure in search of some guy and along the way she finds all of these people that she has to trust because they know her destination and she does not.
It’s an interesting situation. I still find it difficult to trust people, but I’m trying harder and I see my efforts making a difference in my own life. A positive difference, so that’s a good thing.
(Oh, and the wagon that I'm describing in the beginning is called a Radio Flyer Town and Country. We had one when I was a kid and I hadn't seen anyone else with one like that for years so I thought it was unique to my family. Kids are self-centered like that. Of course there were other wagons like it. The company wouldn't have made just one.)
“Get in,” he says as we reach the center of the road.
“What?” I say. I’m not going to get in an old wooden wagon aimed down a steep hill.
“Get in,” Bryan says again. He pulls one of the helmets out of the wagon and hands it to me.
“This is so dangerous. I’m not getting in. Let’s go home, Bryan,” I say. I grab his hand and try to drag him back to the house.
“Amma, relax, it’s not that dangerous.” He lets go of my hand and gets the other helmet out of the wagon and slips it on his head. “We have helmets. We’ll be safe.”
I’m still hesitant as I watch him straighten out the wagon so we’ll go straight down.
“Get in,” he says again. I slowly crawl into the wagon. It wobbles whenever my weight shifts.
“Don’t kill me,” I murmur.
“Relax,” Bryan says, “trust me.” He grabs the handle and pushes it back hard against the front of the wagon. “Get back,” he says to me so I scrunch myself into the back panel of the wagon, grateful that Bryan will be in the front.
Bryan gives a slight push and jumps into the wagon. He grabs the handle and pushes it from left to right until we have finally been straightened out. I am hugging myself in the back of the wagon, pulling my knees closer and closer to my body.
“Relax!” Bryan yells to me. His voice seems to stumble with the bumpy road. I close my eyes in a refusal to relax but without sight there is nothing to be afraid of and my entire body calms down. We hit a larger than normal rock and are airborne for one second.
This came out of a story which revolved around the main character (again named Amma) taking a road trip to find someone. Instead of finding the person that she is looking for, she finds a number of other people, including a free spirited young man named Bryan.
My freshman year of college I was doing a lot of things that young people do their freshman year of college. For me, even more so than having the general new experiences, I was making a whole new set of friends. I felt like I had been completely abandoned by the people that I used to know when I got up to University. It wasn’t that they weren’t around. They were. It was just that it had become apparent that we were heading in different directions in our lives. I have always wanted more than to just hang around the same town forever and to start a family right away. I wasn’t working on a career that was conducive to that. It’s not that I don’t think it’s absolutely lovely that they wanted families and that they were working on what they wanted, it just wasn’t for me. I have never wanted the career that I felt half-assed about so that I didn’t feel bad when I quit to have children.
Anyway, I was making new friends and one of them was this wonderful guy named Bryan who had a lovely deep voice and beautiful eyes and who listened to reggae and compared joining fraternities to joining gangs. He skated, which I thought was fantastic because it was something that I always wanted to learn how to do. I thought he was fantastic, so I wrote him into my stories as a person who teaches the main character a lot about herself. The first exercise was an exercise in trust. I think that trusting people is something that I struggle with. I never know who to trust and when I’m supposed to start trusting them. Should I trust that most people are good right away, or should I hang back and watch? I made the character of Amma the same way. She was worried about trusting people and then she goes on this fantastic cross country adventure in search of some guy and along the way she finds all of these people that she has to trust because they know her destination and she does not.
It’s an interesting situation. I still find it difficult to trust people, but I’m trying harder and I see my efforts making a difference in my own life. A positive difference, so that’s a good thing.
(Oh, and the wagon that I'm describing in the beginning is called a Radio Flyer Town and Country. We had one when I was a kid and I hadn't seen anyone else with one like that for years so I thought it was unique to my family. Kids are self-centered like that. Of course there were other wagons like it. The company wouldn't have made just one.)
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Smoking in the Bathroom and Other Revelations 3/1/08
Caleb does not like it when she smokes in the bathroom. It doesn’t matter now. This is not his bathroom. She is in Mike’s bathroom and if he dislikes her smoking he has not mentioned it yet. She is always resting cigarettes on the edge of the sink, leaving them there as she fixes her hair or touches up her make-up. The ashes grow long and eventually fall off. She never bothers to clean them up, preferring instead to leave them for the next person who comes along and has some desire to wash their hands. Right now, her hands are on top of her head rearranging her hair and a length of ash has just fallen off of her cigarette and into the sink. The movement of the ash falling into the ivory abyss beneath her causes her to look down. As if seeing her cigarette for the first time she reaches down to it with her right hand as the left one remains on top of her head, holding her hair in place. She takes a quick drag from the cigarette and sets it down again. Both of her hands return to the top of her head and continue their work on her hair.
“What’re you doing?” Mike asks from the bedroom. She turns and looks at him. He is still sitting in the bed, propped up with pillows. She closes the door.
“I’m fixing my hair,” she shouts through the door.
This story came out of a first line that I really love. “Caleb does not like it when she smokes in the bathroom.” I love that first line. I love it so much that I haven’t given up on it yet and the truth is that nothing is coming out of it. I try and I try to write this story about how much Caleb dislikes it when his girlfriend is smoking in the bathroom but it never turns into anything that I like.
In nearly every version of the story that follows this first line she is not in Caleb’s bathroom and therefore doesn’t have to worry about him as much as she would have if she were. In this particular version she is in her lover’s bathroom. He lets her smoke in the bathroom. The smoking in the bathroom doesn’t even seem to be something that this particular character enjoys. She is always smoking in bathrooms but she does it more to get away from people than she does because she really wants a cigarette.
My favorite part of this excerpt from the story is the end, when she closes the bathroom door so that she doesn’t have to see Mike but continues the conversation with him through it. Closing a door on someone so that you can shout through it seems like something a person would do in a relationship that they aren’t exactly comfortable with. Maybe they don’t actually want to see the person so that they can imagine being with someone else or talking to someone else. I don’t think that my main character in this story really likes Mike. I think that she is just cheating on Caleb with him so that she doesn’t have to confront the commitment that he represents.
The truth is that people do things like this all the time. They become scared of the relationship that they are in and instead of confronting the issue head on by talking it over with their significant other, they decide to cheat or find some other way to sabotage the relationship, that way it will fall apart. It’s easier to destroy a relationship for an obvious reason (infidelity) than it is to worry over someone maybe leaving you for a reason that may not be so obvious (some kind of inherent character flaw that you never knew about but which is so obvious to everyone you attempt to enter into a long term relationship with). The main character in this story doesn’t like herself very much and does everything that she can to push the people that she cares about further and further away so that she doesn’t have to worry about them not liking her because she is simply who she is.
I understand her completely. Maybe that's why I'm so scared to write a final version of this story.
“What’re you doing?” Mike asks from the bedroom. She turns and looks at him. He is still sitting in the bed, propped up with pillows. She closes the door.
“I’m fixing my hair,” she shouts through the door.
This story came out of a first line that I really love. “Caleb does not like it when she smokes in the bathroom.” I love that first line. I love it so much that I haven’t given up on it yet and the truth is that nothing is coming out of it. I try and I try to write this story about how much Caleb dislikes it when his girlfriend is smoking in the bathroom but it never turns into anything that I like.
In nearly every version of the story that follows this first line she is not in Caleb’s bathroom and therefore doesn’t have to worry about him as much as she would have if she were. In this particular version she is in her lover’s bathroom. He lets her smoke in the bathroom. The smoking in the bathroom doesn’t even seem to be something that this particular character enjoys. She is always smoking in bathrooms but she does it more to get away from people than she does because she really wants a cigarette.
My favorite part of this excerpt from the story is the end, when she closes the bathroom door so that she doesn’t have to see Mike but continues the conversation with him through it. Closing a door on someone so that you can shout through it seems like something a person would do in a relationship that they aren’t exactly comfortable with. Maybe they don’t actually want to see the person so that they can imagine being with someone else or talking to someone else. I don’t think that my main character in this story really likes Mike. I think that she is just cheating on Caleb with him so that she doesn’t have to confront the commitment that he represents.
The truth is that people do things like this all the time. They become scared of the relationship that they are in and instead of confronting the issue head on by talking it over with their significant other, they decide to cheat or find some other way to sabotage the relationship, that way it will fall apart. It’s easier to destroy a relationship for an obvious reason (infidelity) than it is to worry over someone maybe leaving you for a reason that may not be so obvious (some kind of inherent character flaw that you never knew about but which is so obvious to everyone you attempt to enter into a long term relationship with). The main character in this story doesn’t like herself very much and does everything that she can to push the people that she cares about further and further away so that she doesn’t have to worry about them not liking her because she is simply who she is.
I understand her completely. Maybe that's why I'm so scared to write a final version of this story.
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