I'm Chopped Liver

My husband came home on Friday from a three week trip down state. He travels for a living so this wasn’t an unusual event. It’s always good to have him back home.


We watch our three year old grand daughter in the evenings and on weekends while our daughter works. She goes to school during the day and Alana, our grand daughter, stays at daycare.

The first time we watched the girl was Saturday night while mom worked.

Alana walked in the front door, saw her pawpaw, as she calls him and never even said hello to me.

Not long after she arrived I asked her if she needed to go to the bathroom. Potty training is still an issue with her. When she gets distracted while playing with her pawpaw, she sometimes forgets.

She said, “Yes, I need to go.”

So I said, “Well, lets go and take care of it.”

She shook her head and said, “No, pawpaw.”

And that was the theme for the rest of the evening. If it was time to eat, pawpaw had to fix her plate. Time to on her pajamas for bed, pawpaw had to help. Time to read a book for bedtime, pawpaw. And so went the evening.

I would have a terrible complex about this except for one thing. It gives me unfettered opportunities to go into my office and write.

When her grandfather is out of town, I have to get moving early in the morning to get any writing done. Or I have to wait for her to take a nap. That doesn’t happen often. She’s not much of a napper. And forget doing anything other than a little lite housework or cooking a meal. She demands all of my attention.

So I really don’t mind much that I become “chopped liver” when my husband is home. But don’t let him know that. I like to really pour on the guilt when he’s with her.

Sometimes it gets me a dinner and a movie!

A Change in the Direction of This Blog

I started out with the well-meaning intent of posting blogs about writing.  From time to time I will still do that, but through the use of guest bloggers.
From now on, my attention will turn to writing more about what is relavent, or humorous about my own life.  There's not that much humor in it.  I'm old, broke, and struggling to sell my work.  But I have a few things to say about life in general and the people I meet.  So, I will concentrate on doing that instead.  I think it will be more productive in the long run and a lot more fun for me.  I hope you feel the same way.

The Day the Muse Died

I sat in front of my new computer and searched for my story files. They had suddenly disappeared from their usual location. Even worse, Facebook kept distracting me. The lure of pointless conversation and humor shared with friends tantalized my fingers and I gave in. Two hours later, my files mysteriously showed up.

I started reading the last chapter I finished and my stomach growled. It was after one in the afternoon and I hadn’t eaten anything since eight that morning. I rushed into the kitchen, dragged the peanut butter and bread out and opened the drawer for a knife. I had to wash one.

Time slipped by and I eventually had the sandwich eaten. It was two o’clock and still nothing of significance had gotten written.

Something smelled. I checked the trash. Yuck! So I carried it out, dodging piles of snow, mud and pit bull bombs. Had to pull my shoes off at the back door. Burr, it’s cold out there.

I dashed back into my office, tripped and fell. How did the printer cord get in the middle of the office floor? Nevermind. I didn’t have a minute to loose, I had to write.

As I picked myself up off the floor I heard a tiny moan. Glancing beneath me, I saw her. It was my muse and she was squished flat. Poor little underfed thing. I tried to revive her but there wasn’t much hope. Suddenly, her tiny body burst into flames and I grabbed my water glass and put her out. None of this had happened before, although she did go on strike once and I had to promise her a new crown and some puffy slippers before she would come back to work. But I had never fallen on her before.

“How do you revive a squished muse?” I asked myself.

I thought and thought. Snapping my fingers I ran to the medicine cabinet where I had stashed a small bottle of fairy dust for just such emergencies. I pulled the stopper out and tripped again. This time it was the dog. He was standing over the body of my muse, licking her. Oh, gross!

When I fell, fairy dust went everywhere. Ooooo, the colors! I shook my head and applied a pinch to her forehead. The dog sneezed. He’s allergic to everything. I heard the muse sneeze too and she shook her head.

“What hit me?” the tiny muse asked. As she raised her itty bitty flat hand to her brow, she puffed up again, just like new.

“I fell on you,” I said. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

She stood on wobbly legs, placed her hands on her hips and glared up at me. “You know, if you’d feed me better, I wouldn’t be so easy to squish.” she yelled. “Now move your fat behind into that chair and get to work!”

She pointed a finger at me and I felt an electric shock bite into my ankle. “And don’t sprinkle that nasty fairy dust on me again! It makes my nose itch!”

I need a new muse.

Some More Sleight of Doing Stuff by Tom Allston (Guest Blogger)

Got an anecdote concerning a long-ago best friend. This was in San Angelo. Marshall was Godzilla's nephew: six-five, two-fifty, mostly muscle. Lifetime arm-wrestling champ of Tom Green County. People used to wonder why "the brawn" and "the brain" ran together. I still do. Maybe it was a kind of gestalt. Who knows?
I'll admit, the guy could be amusing. He had a histrionic, over-the-top way of telling a tale. Highly entertaining.
He was also canny, and really quick on the uptake. The latter talent served his coffee-shop performances well, and more than once made for a jaw-dropping display. Those came in handy in a milieu of rough types of humans.
Gotta back up just a little. Wife #1 had trained in ballet. This provided me with a couple of techniques: how to give a damned effective rubdown (which dancers need after a performance or practice) and the secret of aiding a lift or toss. Without that, male dancers, although deceptively strong, couldn't do the stuff they typically do. In case you didn't know, professional wrestlers use this lift technique.
It works like this: When someone lifts you high in the air--or tosses you across a ring--you assist the movement by springing off the balls of your feet. This overcomes the inertia of rest, and helps start the lift or throw. It's seldom noticed.
My femme and I found it handy for getting her onto a car of high brick wall to warch parades or riots, etc. Years later, Marshall immediately saw the value of the maneuver.
Now, when you run with roustabouts and bull-haulers, you occasionally face a testosterone-goaded threat situation. This usually involved several toughs who were well into their cups. They's start by picking on the smaller guy--me.
"You got a problem with my little buddy?" Mashall would ask calmly, grabbing the back of my belt. I'd bounce upward, he'd heft, and I'd wind up on his shoulder.
"You gotta go through me," he'd conclude. At that point, the threat usually evaporated.
Once, we even got to perform the bit in reverse. I'd been roughnecking for most of a year, and could lift a V-8 short block. But I have an odd musculature: It doesn't gain bulk, it just gets harder and harder. My 180 pounds still looked like 150 or so.
We were on our way into the coffee shop when somebody in a gang of six or seven mouthed a generalized challenge. The opportunity flashed like a stroke of light.
"Hey, don't pick on my big buddy," I said. A glance upward showed that Doc Savage glint in Marshall's eye. I grabbed his belt, he sprang and I heaved with all my might.
With 250 pounds of him suddenly balanced on my right shoulder, I added, "You'll have to deal with both of us."
The attack squad disappeared so fast, I wondered if they'd been real. Marshall's guffaws threw us badly off kilter, and I almost collapsed before he could dismount.
Why bring this up, other than an ego-eruption? Okay, guilty as charged, there. Sue me. More to the point, I see it as a real-life example of the fact that things aren't always as they seem. And that's a reality that makes mystery stories and literary twists believable.
But writers, especially during the painful birthing phase, often misuse or abuse the twist and diversion process. A common beginner's error is to use the technique clumsily. I've damn sure done that: I once got a rejection letter that gently pointed out the editor could see the twist coming a mile away. This often happens because the writer hasn't read broadly enough in the genre being attempted. He just doesn't know how much ground has already been covered.
Bear in mind that the essentials of mystery writing and "twist" tales are almost diametrically opposite. Mystery readers want to match wits with the writer (and by extension the protagonist), while the reader of a twist-ending story wants to be caught, figuratively speaking, with his drawers around his ankles. So a mystery needs clues planted along the way to hint at the solution, whereas a twist should be a complete surprise.
But both must logically follow. They can, even should, be sprinkled with McGuffins ("red herrings") to mislead the unwary, but the ending has to make sense, and must not result from some agency the reader has no way of knowing.
That, in my observation, is a common fatal error of beginners. It's akin to deus ex machina--"machinery of the gods"--in which a higher power finally steps in to set things right. Accepted, even expected, in the drama and comedy of Classic Greece, it just doesn't cut it now.
For reference, some erstwhile masters of the twist were H.H. Munro (Saki), O. Henry and Guy de Maupassant. No doubt there are contemporary writers skilled in the genre, too, but my own reading isn't broad enough to name them.
The names Doyle and Poe loom large in the history of mystery, although both, in my opinion, at times used the device of withheld information. Poe was known to effectively apply a twist to his story endings, too. Again, I'm not that familiar with current mystery writing--but that's why God made best-seller lists.
Another point is that combination writing can be doubly effective. In science fiction and fantasy (I am kinda familiar with these), a novel often is also a mystery. Not uncommonly, comedy is incorporated into both genres, and currently, there are some fantasy-humor-detective series. Threefers: The reader's cup runneth amok.
I can't stress too strongly that breadth of reading is invaluable as a preparation for and strengthening of writing. I know that when I shit and fall back in it, literarily (?) speaking, it's because I've missed some background that I should have been familiar with.
A penultimate note: I see stuff from beginning writers who obviously have as their main influence the output of Hollywood and its ceteras. I think that's a bad idea.
For starters, movies are usually derivative, and a writer should be able to come up with something that's fresh. And too often, film and reality can't be crowbarred into the same thought. If you need proof, just ask a cop, musician or teacher what they think of movies depicting their profession. Any professional. Any movie. Exceptions are scarce as condoms in a nunnery.
Another putrid influence is computer games. That "move along, kill something, move along, kill something," form is already showing up in beginners' writing.
Too bad, so sad.

Guest Bloggers

From time to time I will be inviting guest bloggers to post to my sight. They will discuss aspects of writing from their own viewpoints.
The upcoming blog post is one of those guests.
Tom Allston is a member of my critique group and a multi-published writer. In his career, he has been published in short stories and is a retired journalist. His other professional credits include, musician, teacher of music and English, oil-field roughneck, advertising writer, and photographer. I'm sure there are other professional credits I am missing. In his lifetime he has gained knowledge and experience in the martial arts, motorcycles, religion and many other areas of interest. He is currently writing a post-apocalyptic novel and has also written numerous sword and sorcery novels and short stories and the list goes on.
In our group, we consider him to be our expert in grammar and style. He is the most efficient and effective among us as an editor. (Although there are several other group members who can at least equal his talent.)
He will probably be the most frequent contributor to my blogs simply because he happens to be the most prolific writer in the group. He often brings two or more pieces at a time for us to critique.
I hope you enjoy his contributions.

The Daily Challenge

Yesterday and today, I've spent hours in front of the computer trying to figure out what happens next. The whole time I was working on it and coming up dry, one of my characters was screaming at me about some comuppance she needed to get out of the way. Even though I knew it didn't come until later on in the story.
I finally gave in and let it happen. It took me less than an hour to work out the whole scene. It flowed from my fingers like water, while the rest of the story was flowing more like molasses on a cold winter day. When I was finished, I was able to go back and start filling in the blanks of what should come before that scene. After about seven pages, I ran dry again. So I went and took a look at the later scene I had finished. Low and behold, what happened after that started spilling out.
I've always struggled to write a book in the order it would happen in. But this is the second time that this sort of thing has happened to me. The last time, it took me two months of work and countless pages to catch up to where my character had led me. And the story flowed seamlessly between the two section.
I guess the moral is: Write what your characters are insisting you get down now. They may not feel like talking about it later. Never lose track of the storyline, but let them out to play at whatever point they want to. You can always fill in later.
The whole thing made me feel a little psycho at first, but I sure felt better when it was over!

Heroes and Villains

I was thinking about story and characters today, as I sat on my front porch feeding the neighborhood squirrels. There’s the fat one. My husband calls him “Buddy” because he’s so friendly. Buddy has no fear of humans. He’ll come to the edge of the porch, stand up and wait for us to throw him a peanut, then either eat it right there or run off under the shade of a tree to enjoy his treat, before coming straight back for the next one. He will also come onto the porch when the front door is open and look in, waiting for us to feed him.
There’s the greedy one. When I’ve fed Buddy, ‘Greedy’ will come out and watch. I can throw a peanut straight out to him, and he’ll ignore it to chase Buddy for his.
Then, there’s the timid one. It took him a while to get used to taking peanuts from us. We’d throw one down to him in the yard, he’d take it, then run and hide while he ate it. We’d throw next peanut a little closer to the porch. “Timid” would stand there wringing his tiny paws and staring at the peanut for several moments before he would venture the few inches closer to get it.
Now, Timid comes into the garden near the porch to get his treats, but he never approaches as close as Buddy does. The biggest motivation for him probably was the blue jay that often stole peanuts while Timid stood contemplating the risk of getting closer.
Things have changed over time. Now, Greedy comes, almost as close as Buddy does and no longer chases him. We have three squirrels hooked on peanuts and a following of blue jays that await their own treats. It’s costing us a bag or two of raw, in-the-shell peanuts a week, but we have fun. And it makes me think about writing.
Okay, everything makes me think about writing. The squirrels prompted me to think of how important character is to a story
No matter what kind of story you write, it’s usually driven by character. From Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea to Stephen King’s The Stand, the character, his choices and the changes that take place in his basic personality are what drives the story to a satisfying conclusion—or doesn’t
Of course, a story must have other elements. A good character without a good story to tell adds up to very little. Story without conflict usually equals zero. However you begin a piece of writing, whether you start with a good story idea or a good character, other elements have to be there to drive the story along.
What makes a good character? The answer is implicit in one succinct phrase: Heroes have flaws, and villains have reasons.
It took me a long time to realize what that means. Heroes are normal human beings thrust into a situation in which they must act. Villains are not necessarily all bad. They might be basically good people, even heroes in any other set of circumstances. But whatever the case, they have a reason to do what they do. A story’s villain can be driven by greed, revenge, lost love, . . . the list goes on and on.
A really good villain must have qualities the reader can identify with, just as the hero must have flaws the reader can identify with. The villain’s reasons lead to his downfall. Overcoming at least one of his flaws makes the hero a hero and a sympathetic character.
I don’t necessarily sympathize with the squirrels and blue jays I feed in the front yard, but they do set me to wondering about what motivates them to choose bravery over fear to gain the treasure of the peanut they seek.
There are many other aspects of character, but the subject is too big to tackle in one blog and there is only so much inspiration hungry squirrels can evoke, even in me. The rest of the subject will have to wait for another blog on another day.