debbie in wonderland: playing the name game

Thank you for playing our game. Say what? Well, no, you actually have been playing our game. If you write fiction, or plays, you must play the name game. Name your characters, name yourself even. You do have a pen name, don’t you? Not even a secret one? Mine is Cuba Libre. Oops, not so secret anymore.

I know that some writers agonize over naming their characters. It’s right up there with having to write a synopsis or outline. But I love the name game. It’s an important exercise, not to be taken too lightly, but it’s still a game.

Just think, you’re in great company. Shakespeare had to name all those characters. He didn’t give us Romeo and Debbie. Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson’s nom de plume) didn’t give us Debbie in Wonderland. Just for the record, I have absolutely nothing against the name Debbie. In fact, I just named my latest character Debbie, a woman who is admirable in every way, including being the patron saint of recycling in my current short story.

So here I am playing the name game again, for characters who will live for only a few pages, barring their reappearance in other stories. In addition to the estimable Debbie, there’s also a Rick and a Noelle and a Brad and a Jennifer (not that Brad and not that Jennifer, although I do often find names, and crises, on the magazine covers in the checkout line). There’s another character who keeps popping up in the story and who may eventually need a name. For now I call him Surfer Dude, as do the other characters.

Part of the fun in playing the name game derives from using names of those we know (in “real life”). Lewis Carroll, of course, named his immortal Alice after a young friend who was his favorite. My Noelle character shares her name with a friend of mine; both Noelles are bright, cheerful, and confident. Rick, on the other hand, is the name of the Bogart character in Casablanca, so I’ve always liked the name. Rick is married to Debbie and they are both from Southern California. They have All-American names. Don’t tell me they are not ethnic; they’re Southern Californians! Brad and Jennifer, in my story, have just split up, as art once again imitates the magazines in the checkout line.

Have you ever used your own name for a character? I try to avoid it, and I don’t see it much, if at all, in other writers. I’ll leave it to you, and the psychologists, to analyze that one. I only know that I run from the subject.

I think of myself as Michael, but I once named a minor character Mike, who was the distant boyfriend of an Annie, who worked in a gallery in Seattle. In this unfinished novel I placed Mike in Alaska, in the ‘70s, working on the pipeline, and planned to either kill him off or, more likely, have him run off with another woman. He’s not me, but I did put a lot of myself into the protagonist Daniel in that story. I believe that’s a common practice for writers.

Some names, as soon as they occur to us, are just right and we know it. In “Speedy Delivery,” the romantic local mailman is Russell. The blonde heroine of my novel Queen of the Rodeo was, before I wrote a sentence of it, named Donna. The original Donna was a former girlfriend in Seattle who was (a) blonde, (b) romantic, and (c) heroic, although she never claimed to be a rodeo queen. In “Keeping an Eye on Lucy,” the title character is an expensive doll who resides in the adult section of a video store. The name Lucy alludes to a similar character in the film Clockwork Orange. My doll character had to be a Lucy.

We all enjoy overhearing bits of conversation from strangers as well as friends, as we shop for names and story ideas. I always read nametags, especially those of waitresses. I stole the name Danette from a waitress at Big Island Steak House and gave it to a small town Texas girl in Queen of the Rodeo. I also get a kick out of naming waitresses after friends, including Jackie and Carlotta in “How Jackie Got Her Oil Changed.”

Sometimes a nickname works better than a given name, which I learned while writing a short story called “Mushroom Girl.” Here’s the opening of that story:

Mushroom Girl used to have a real name. Her friends stopped using it, however, after the traumatic mushroom incident, and the rumble with Tomato Girl, and the timely meeting with a handsome carnivore.

We never do learn Mushroom Girl’s real name. The handsome carnivore turned out to be T-Bone Man, of course. This story was inspired by a friend’s experience as a vegetable. My friend is named Meredith, but I call her Mushroom Girl, and in my mind I always see her wearing the mushroom costume.

Thank you, Mushroom Girl, and Danette, and Lucy, and Donna, and Jackie, and Carlotta, and Russell, and Noelle, and Brad, and Jennifer, and Surfer Dude, and Rick, and Debbie. Thank you for playing our game.

reading aloud

Ideally the following words would be spoken. You would close your eyes, turn off the voices in your head, and just listen as the words are read to you. When was the last time someone read aloud to you? When was the first time? Classic stories, no doubt. The cat in the hat, that rascal. I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them, Sam-I-am, then or now. Famous poems, too, about owls and pussycats (who were married by the turkey who lives on the hill, lest we forget) and other creatures having great adventures.

Being read to, often at naptime or bedtime, slowing down, easing into sleep. Reading aloud, a pleasure we rediscover when we become parents or uncles or aunties. But also, if we are very lucky, a pleasure that we share with other adults. It’s one of the overlooked luxuries in life and priceless. You might pay someone to read to you, if you had no friends, but how sad that would be. Reading aloud, and being read to, is a joyful time for those who love stories and poems, who love words.

Close your eyes and listen to the words. We read slowly and listen slowly, savoring each gourmet bite. No fast food here, please. Tonight we’re reading Raymond Chandler, here the opening of “Red Wind”:

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those
hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain
passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your
skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight.
Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study
their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen.

Now that’s an opening. Maybe not a good bedtime story though. It was Ross Macdonald who said that “Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence.” Here’s another passage from Chandler, from Farewell, My Lovely:

The smell of sage drifted up from a canyon and made me
think of a dead man and a moonless sky. Straggly stucco
houses were molded flat to the side of the hill, like bas-reliefs.
Then there were no more houses, just the still dark foothills
with an early star or two above them, and the concrete ribbon
of road and a sheer drop on one side into a tangle of scrub
oak and manzanita where sometimes you can hear the call of
the quails if you stop and keep still and wait. On the other side
of the road was a raw clay bank at the edge of which a few
unbeatable wild flowers hung on like naughty children that
won’t go to bed.

Don’t stop to comment, just read. We’re not critiquing. Read. Listen. Be the words. If you like Chandler, you’ll probably like James Lee Burke. Here’s the opening of Last Car to Elysian Fields:

The first week after Labor Day, after a summer of hot
wind and drought that left the cane fields dust blown and
spiderwebbed with cracks, rain showers once more
danced across the wetlands, the temperature dropped
twenty degrees, and the sky turned the hard flawless blue
of an inverted ceramic bowl. In the evenings I sat on the
back steps of a rented shotgun house on Bayou Teche
and watched the boats passing in the twilight and listened
to the Sunset Limited blowing down the line. Just as the
light went out of the sky the moon would rise like an orange
planet above the oaks that covered my rented backyard,
then I would go inside and fix supper for myself and eat
alone at the kitchen table.

We read aloud before falling asleep, then let the words and images work their magic in our heads, coloring our dreams. Then, perhaps, if we are very lucky, the rhythms of Chandler and Burke and Dr. Seuss and Edward Lear will stay on after we awake and help shape our own words and sentences at the keyboard. Maybe the cat in the hat will teach us all we need to know about conflict. Perhaps the owl and the pussycat will teach us profound lessons in romance. If not, then so be it. The words await us anyway. Like a child who begs for a favorite story again and again, we will return.

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

They danced by the light of the moon,

The moon,

The moon,

They danced by the light of the moon.

what do you write with?

Answer fast. What do you write with? There are no wrong answers, so just answer. Now record your answer. Did you come up with “computer,” or “pen” or “pencil?” Or maybe you said “imagination” (if so, give yourself extra points). Or perhaps you answered “fear and loathing” (in that case, you win the Hunter Thompson award).

All right, here’s a second chance. What do you write with? This time make it a list of what you write with. Yes, you can include the “fear and loathing” answer if it’s true. When you’ve finished your list, come back and let’s compare notes.

While I was waiting for you, I proofed my first two paragraphs and got thoroughly hung up on the spelling of the word “answer.” There’s a “w” in there, a letter that made me suddenly uncomfortable. Typical of our crazy English language, with a silent letter that had me running to the Oxford English Dictionary (the “shorter” version, which is two huge volumes). That silent “w,” found in the Old English and Old Norse words, has survived to this day, God bless it, like a diligent little fossil that keeps showing up every day for work but nobody has the heart to retire it to a museum.

The silent “w” in “answer” has a more famous cousin, of course, in the Middle English word “often.” That silent “t” is silent, isn’t it, although I often hear it pronounced, and the dictionaries include the non-silent version as an alternative pronunciation. Let’s just pray that the silent “w” in “answer” doesn’t suddenly decide to imitate its cousin and come out of that quiet closet!

But I digress. Let’s compare lists. On your list did you include the ear? It’s on my list, near the top. I write with a computer keyboard and screen (tactile and visual); with varying degrees of imagination (the mind’s eye); with fear and loathing (fear of having nothing to say, and loathing the muses for going on frequent long vacations); and with the ear.

I always speak of my writing room as a quiet place to write, but it’s not. Right now there’s music in the room. Diana Krall is singing a sultry “Besame Mucho,” and my parrot Tobi is talking away, saying “did you miss me?” and “give us a kiss.” Wild birds singing outside, although not in English. Wind in the trees outside my window. With all this inspiration I should probably be writing a romantic story or poem, instead of writing about silent letters.

Other sounds in the room? The tapping of the keys as I write, and when I’m waiting for the next thought I tap lightly at the keys without pressing down, like a batter taking practice swings while the pitcher reads the catcher’s signs. The click of the computer mouse. The slow tapping of my foot to the music. More faint are the sounds of the parrot eating cashews and biting on a paper bowl.

I close my eyes and hear my own breathing. I slow the breathing and slow my mind. All the sounds in my writing room are familiar and welcome. They relax me and comfort me while I wait for that damn Thalia to return from wherever the hell she’s wandered off to this time. I know that if I wait she will eventually return, to nudge me toward an idea for a new story, perhaps something light and humorous. Or, as is more often the case, she will take the large sledge hammer that she carries, the one with my name on it, and apply it to my thick head, producing a remarkable sound that drowns out all the other sounds, a sound that opens my ears to a new story that was right there in front of my face all the time.

In the meantime I listen to my own sighs. Diana Krall is singing “I get along without you very well.” Oh, great! Just five minutes ago it was “besame mucho,” and now this. I give the parrot another cashew and wait for the sound of the sledge hammer.

winter olympics for writers

Yes, the 2008 Olympics are about to begin in Beijing, but I'm one of those people who enjoy the Winter Olympics more. It's smaller and cozier, and it has all that snow and ice, cool stuff we don't see living in Hawaii. Before the craziness begins on 8/8/08 in China, I'm feeling nostalgic for the 2006 Winter Olympics from Turin. Here's what I wrote two years ago about some of the nice-on-ice highlights, including some lessons for writers.

It happens every four years. The Olympic Winter Games take over my life, and the lives of many others. I didn’t make it to Turin this past month, but I was there in spirit. Following the closing ceremonies on Sunday evening I spent a couple of hours ungluing my eyes from the television screen. For two weeks I was totally involved in the human drama of this great event, each athlete a story, each day a new opportunity for glory. We watched them fall, then rise again to fight for redemption, as figure skater Sasha Cohen did in winning the silver medal with her amazing performance.

The Olympics always teach us something about participating and competing. I was fortunate to catch an interview with Sarah Hughes, the gold medal figure skater from the 2002 Salt Lake Games. She was asked if she gave advice to her younger sister before Emily Hughes went out on the ice in these 2006 Games. Sarah said that when you train and compete you just have to find what works for you and then stick with that. She said that Emily would follow her same routine, including sleeping for nine and a quarter hours the night before the competition. How precise! Obviously Emily has discovered exactly how much sleep she needs each night.

Nobody said it then, but this seems to be good advice for writers as well. Find what works for you. Then stick with it. This implies a writing routine, one that works in your life, deciding when to write, and how to write, what kind of outline, or no outline, and so on. Then it’s all about discipline. If you give yourself to the discipline you will discover the freedom to grow, as one might lock oneself in a writing room all morning, only to discover that there are no locks on the imagination, and no walls to confine the creative spirit.

I learned other valuable lessons from the Winter Games this time around. You can learn a lot by watching a person slide a 42-pound granite stone (or “rock”) down a long sheet of ice, with two teammates walking in front of the stone and sweeping hard, or lightly, or not at all (with what Lynn calls “those little sweepy things”), as the stone makes it way to the target (or “house”). Yes, it’s curling! I used to believe that the world was divided into those who loved anchovies and those who would rather starve than eat one. Now I am convinced that the world is divided into those who don’t get curling, those who love curling, and those who would love curling if they only gave it a chance.

Curling is that strange girl in your high school English class who was from another planet, but her charms were only waiting to be discovered. Once enchanted, however, you could not resist her. One of the Olympic commentators said that curling is like peanuts, that once you start it’s hard to stop. All I know is that I found myself waking up at 5 in the morning, without an alarm, knowing only that a curling game was on TV at that very moment. The siren call pulled me down the stairs, still half asleep, turning on the game, and the coffee, and curling up on the sofa for yet another date.

Midway through the Olympics I knew enough about the sport to have an opinion about the tactics of each rock. Curling has been called “chess on ice,” an apt description. The captain of the four-person team, called the skip, is the mastermind, thinking several turns ahead and mapping the team’s strategy. The skip also throws the last two rocks in each of the ten ends (innings), so he must perform well at these critical moments.

It is instructive to watch the closeups of the eyes of the curlers as they slide and release the rock. Eyes steady on the target, the picture of concentration. The next time I need to focus in my writing, I will see those eyes. I will also see the USA skip, Pete Fenson, from small-town Minnesota, owner of Dave’s Pizza. If Pete were in a Western movie he would be the leader of an outlaw gang, the one you would call “a cool customer,” telling the guys just what to do and when to do it, then riding into town to rob the bank. In Turin, Pete and his gang rode out of town with bronze medals to chants of “USA! USA!”

The team’s female fans also serenaded them with “Jeepers, creepers, where’d you get those sweepers? Jeepers, creepers, where’d you get those guys?” Curling fans wear crazy hats too, but that’s another story. After watching the fans during the games, I have a hunch that most, if not all, of them love anchovies too. Next time I’m in Bemidji, Minnesota, I plan to drop in at Dave’s Pizza and order a pizza with extra anchovies. Shouldn’t be a problem.

Bemidji is also the home of the USA women’s curling team, which struggled during the Olympics but was still just a few good shots at critical times from bringing back medals. The young women on the team are from northern regions — Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Alaska — and have those fair complexions and clear eyes that seem just right for the sport of curling. Like the men’s team, they were good teammates, together in victory or defeat. I wish them well. Perhaps they will make it to the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver. Maybe by then there will be a Curling Channel on cable. Stay tuned.

cheetos and the second coming

My friend Richie from up the street was there when it happened. I was glad I was not alone when the latest Cheetos news miraculously appeared on the big TV screen in my living room. I say “miraculously” because it was an amazing story, one worthy of the Almighty. In fact, it was all about the Lord. The news was so astounding that Richie stopped drinking his beer for a whole minute and just stared at the screen, his eyes big and his mouth wide open.

What it was was Jesus, on a Cheeto. But not just on a Cheeto. It was Jesus on a cross on a Cheeto. In the world of snack food it doesn’t get any better than this.

The woman who found Jesus on the Cheeto is named Kelly Ramey. She lives in High Ridge, Missouri (the “show me” state, of course), and she’s decided to keep the miraculous Cheeto, not sell it on eBay. If you want to see Kelly, and the famous Cheeto, they are both on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgFchkUFzqg).

“Oh my God,” Richie said, once he found his voice.

“Exactly,” I said, as I pressed reverse on the remote and, through the modern miracle of the DVR, found the close-up of the holy Cheeto and pressed pause. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

Richie took a long pull on his bottle of Budweiser and finally said, “When she’s ready to sell it she’ll make a bundle?”

“No, it’s not about the money. She said she’s keeping it anyway. I admire that choice. But you know, Richie, what we’re looking at is bigger than any snack. This may be ... the Second Coming.”

Richie started to laugh, then he suddenly stopped and looked at me like I was crazy. “No way, man. On a Cheeto? Jesus isn’t coming back that way. When he returns he’s coming in glory. Everybody knows that.”

I sat back on the couch, put my hands behind my head and my feet up, and waited with great anticipation for Richie’s newest rant. I didn’t have long to wait. Richie had swallowed the bait.

“Hey,” Richie said, pointing his Bud bottle at me, his voice louder now, “you go to church on Sunday, you know better than to expect Jesus to appear that way. On a Cheeto, man? On a little cheesy thing that lady might just as well have eaten in one bite? And what do you think happened? Do you think God and Jesus were up in heaven ... and God was like Morgan Freeman, with the great God voice, right? ... and God says it’s time to return to earth, and Jesus is cool with that until God tells him that this time he will be arriving on earth in a Cheeto bag? ... and God would get to stay up in heaven with the angels and the harps and stuff? ... and maybe Jesus would complain about having to do all the risky stuff on earth? ... is that what you think?”

Richie stopped pointing the bottle at me and drank from it. Then he sighed. “Sorry, man, I didn’t mean to yell at you, but jeez ... I mean, for cripes sake, man, there’s just no way.”

“What if it’s not the Second Coming,” I said, “what if it’s just a sign? You saw how happy the folks in that town were when they saw the Cheeto. It was bringing joy into their lives.”

“A sign? Well yeah, I guess. Like those signs in the Bible. I don’t remember them all. Wasn’t there a burning bush in there somewhere? And the bright star when Jesus was born? That was a sign. And didn’t Jesus turn water into wine at that wedding party?”

“That last one was more of a miracle than a sign,” I said.

“But it was a party,” Richie said. “And there must have been food to go with the wine. Not Cheetos, of course. But something like that. Maybe an old Jewish snack. Maybe like a falafel. Maybe a Jewish taco.” Richie sat up in his chair all of a sudden and leaned toward me. “Or maybe a Jewish cheese snack, one that they fried, one that looked a hell of a lot like a Cheeto!”

Richie smiled and leaned closer. “That’s it,” he said, his voice lower now, “and maybe Jesus was doing other miracle stuff that they never wrote down in the Bible. Maybe turning the water into wine was just one of his party miracles. Maybe he was leaving signs all over the Holy Land ... every time they invited him to a wedding, or a birthday party, or Bar Mitzvah ... maybe he was getting his image out there and you couldn’t go to a party in those times without somebody finding Jesus in the snack food. And now today, in these modern times, here’s this lady in Missouri finding Jesus on a cross on a Cheeto, and everybody’s all excited ... but if you lived in the olden days, like anywhere in the same time zone where Jesus was, you’d be thinking that Jesus was everywhere, that he was part of every party, and they didn’t have to go on TV to talk about it.”

Richie stopped to catch his breath, and perhaps to ponder the magnitude of his theory, and he just sat there staring at the closeup of the Jesus Cheeto on the big screen and nodding his head.

“Well,” I said, “these are wonderful times we live in, no doubt about it. What do you say we go to church together this Sunday.”

“Good idea, man. I’ve got a few questions for the minister. Do you think he might be preaching on the Jesus Cheeto? That would be truly awesome.”

After a while we got off the Cheeto talk and settled in to watch the Red Sox and Angels game from Fenway. About the second inning, however, Richie strolled into the kitchen and came back with an unopened bag of crunchy Cheetos and a large mixing bowl. He proceeded to pour the entire contents of the bag into the bowl, then grinned at me and asked me to help. “Don’t eat them without inspecting them first,” he said. Richie’s First Commandment. I told him I’d be careful. We spent the rest of the game reverently consuming way too many Cheetos. All the evidence of our exploit was in the new color of our fingertips. Fortunately there was enough beer on hand to wash down the crunchy snacks.

Alas, I must report that we didn’t find a Jesus Cheeto. And yet ... in the bottom of the bowl ... Richie did discover one Cheeto that he swore looked just like the face of Madonna. Not the Madonna from the Bible, but Richie was grateful at that point for any sign.

Ah, my friend Richie. As I said before, when the Jesus Cheeto news came on the TV I was glad I was not alone.