Our chief weapon is surprise

If you prick us, do we not bleed?

2010-04-10T20:36:00.002-10:00

Here’s a second question that helps us understand how readers and writers connect. Last week we looked at the connecting power of humor and laughter (“if you tickle us, do we not laugh?”). Now it’s time to share a little pain.

Shylock’s speech in Act 3, Scene 1 of The Merchant of Venice asks, “If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die?” Shakespeare’s topic in this speech is the common humanity of Jews and Christians, but it applies to other groups as well.

Let’s leave the poison and dying aside for now, but think for a moment about one person drawing a little blood from another. “You may feel a little prick,” the lab technician warns us, or the nurse giving us an injection. The word prick comes from an Old English word prica. (Because Shakespeare and the Elizabethans loved naughty double entendres, you have to be on guard whenever the word prick appears in Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, but at the moment we're not talking about laughter.)

To prick something is to puncture it lightly. That’s what the lab tech or nurse does as we sit and watch (or look away). We feel momentary pain. If you prick us, do we not bleed? Yes, if we’re human.

As readers, of course, we don’t expect to be reading along in a short story or novel and suddenly feel pain and begin losing blood because of something the writer has written. But when we are reading about characters in pain we often do feel their pain. The writer has drawn characters we care about, then has shown these characters in pain, and so we shed a little emotional blood. We suffer along with the characters, and I suspect along with the writer as well.

I have trouble remembering times when I’ve given my characters physical pain, or made them bleed. As for emotional pain and suffering, oh yeah I can do that. Here’s one formula—give your hero or heroine (or both) a taste of romance, let them begin to fall in love, and then bring in the trouble. Keep them apart, overwhelm them with distractions and misunderstandings, begin to break their hearts. If it’s comedy, we’re heading for a happy ending, but first let’s prick them and watch them bleed for 250 pages. Ah, that’s the ticket.

Ready for a surprise test? Of course not, but we’re writing about pain today. Here’s your test. Name your favorite fiction writer (only one). Then select your favorite book by that writer and hold it in your hand. Now close your eyes. When you open your eyes you’ll find yourself on a desert island. Are you alone? Of course not. You have your favorite book by your favorite writer. You’ve been wanting to reread it anyway. Here’s your chance. Don’t worry about food, you’ll love the tropical fruit and plentiful seafood on your island, but your only companion is your favorite writer. Open the book and begin to read. Prepare to laugh. Prepare to bleed. When you finish the book, just give us a call and we’ll bring you back from the island.

If sharing laughter is one of life’s great pleasures, and connects reader with writer, what is sharing pain? We can see the sharing of pain, the showing of compassion, as further evidence of our humanity. The pain does not give us pleasure. I’m not afraid of needles, but I don’t go out of my way for them (Hey, somebody want to give me a shot? I haven’t had one all day).

Pain is part of life, whether it’s physical or emotional pain. We should be willing to share that just as we share laughter. It makes us human, and keeps us human. What is wrong with someone who never laughs and never cries? Something missing there.

As readers we open a book, begin a new story, on board with the writer. We bring our humanity to the story. The writer depends on that! “If you tickle us, do we not laugh?” “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” These are rhetorical questions. We all know the answers.

If you tickle us, do we not laugh?

2010-03-04T10:46:00.000-10:00

If you tickle us, do we not laugh? This is the first of several questions I want to begin to explore, with the goal of understanding how readers and writers connect. The tickle question comes from Shylock’s speech in Act 3, Scene 1 of The Merchant of Venice.

Shakespeare’s topic in that speech is the common humanity of Jews and Christians. Shylock asks, “If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die?” I’m intrigued by the mixture of tragedy and comedy in those lines, with laughter surrounded by bleeding on one side, and dying on the other.

If I put on my reader’s hat for a moment, and reflect on my favorite writers of fiction, I quickly discover that many of these writers do tickle me and make me laugh. Think of your own favorite writers. Do some of them make you laugh? Do you share their sense of humor? Do you share their view of the world? I’ll talk about Shylock’s questions about bleeding and dying at another time, but for now let’s listen to the laughter.

Laughter is one behavior that defines us as human. Laughter is best when we share it. There are few moments I enjoy more in life than sharing a good laugh. I may be in the audience, or in a small group, or at times I may be the one telling the joke or reading a humorous scene. The sound of laughter, sharing in that moment, is one of the best ways of bonding with others, right up there with sharing a meal.

But what about those times when it’s just ourselves alone with a book, an audience of one for the writer we’ve chosen to spend time with? We may not laugh out loud, or even smile, when the writer tickles us, but the connection has been made. The writer has given us characters we want to know more about, the writer has put these characters into action, and along the way we are on board with the story, ready to be tickled whenever the moment and the words are right.

We may not think about it at the time, but we have shared a moment with the writer, and, in a way, shared that moment with all those who read the same story. We have connected.

Let’s close with a laugh, shall we? William Goldman, the author of The Princess Bride, also wrote the screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In that film there’s a famous scene where the two train robber heroes, played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford, have been chased to the edge of a high cliff by a posse. Their only escape is a long jump into the river below. As they stare down at the distant water, Sundance, the Redford character, has a confession for Butch:

Butch Cassidy: Alright. I'll jump first.
Sundance Kid: No.
Butch Cassidy: Then you jump first.
Sundance Kid: No, I said.
Butch Cassidy: What's the matter with you?
Sundance Kid: I can't swim.
Butch Cassidy: Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill you.

J.D. Salinger, we hardly knew ye

2010-02-28T20:58:00.001-10:00

J.D. Salinger, best known for writing a sensationally popular and critically acclaimed novel over 50 years ago, and for never having appeared onOprah or The Tonight Show, or pretty much anywhere else outside of Cornish, New Hampshire, after he ran from his celebrity, died last week at the age of 91.

This news has been rattling around in my head in the five days since he left us (this time for good). My thoughts on Salinger keep returning not to the writer but to his most famous character, the narrator and antihero of The Catcher in the Rye, on his way home at Christmas from yet another dismal failure as a prep school student, but not going straight home, instead spending a weekend underground in Manhattan, searching, lost, the 20th century Huck Finn, and like Huck always on the move—Holden Caulfield.

Everyone who's read Catcher has their own memories. For me, it's summer and I've just graduated from high school. I'm in Saint Louis taking music classes and I've bought a copy of the book I've heard about and I'm sitting in a small restaurant by myself, reading Holden's account of his weekend in New York City.

The book's paperback cover promises that "This unusual book will shock you, may make you laugh, and may break your heart—but you will never forget it." True on all points, although the book gave me more laughs than shocks, and as for breaking my heart, that was something I would have to wait six months for, when my high school sweetheart ran off with a sailor (an event that Holden would probably describe as both "corny" and "crummy").

About six years later Holden is waiting for me again. I need to choose a subject for a master's thesis in English, and I return to The Catcher in the Rye. By this time I've taken just about every literature class I can and I'm armed with all kinds of cool analytical tools to dissect Salinger and his book. When I read the rest of his fiction I am struck mostly by the importance of family in the stories, and not so much parents as siblings. All the Glass family brothers and sisters drive most of the other stories. As for Catcher, it's Holden's sister, Phoebe, who means the most to him and ultimately saves him from his crummy lost weekend. It's for Phoebe that Holden returns home.

So I write the thesis and call it "The Value of the Family in J. D. Salinger." Having finished the project, of course, I move on to other writers, other literature classes, away from Holden andCatcher, although, as the cover says, you will never forget it. Or him.

Eventually I move on to teach college English in Seattle. You would think that I'd include Holden in one of the college English courses, but I never do. I don't know why, I just don't. When I board a United flight one snowy Seattle morning, on my way to a new life in Hawaii, how can I have known that Holden is waiting for me on Maui?

It takes a couple of years on Maui, but on a fateful afternoon at Baldwin High School, there I am in the dusty old book room and another teacher is telling me to "look around and see what you can find." I spy a modest stack of worn, abandoned paperbacks against a wall. I move closer for a better look, and of course it's The Catcher in the Rye. Holden's been waiting for me. Lucky for me, and lucky for my students, there are just enough copies for the one class that awaits a new book. The next day I pass out the old paperbacks, ask the students to open them to chapter one, and then I begin reading aloud:

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

Nobody speaks. I look up and the students all have their faces in the books. "Keep reading," one of them says. So I do. In the days that follow we live through that weekend with Holden Caulfield. By the time we finish the book the school year is almost over. No time to start another book. I collect some of the Catcher paperbacks (about half of the books have disappeared, and I know that the students who liked Holden best just can't give him up, and that's fine). I return the remaining books to the dusty old book room. They may still be there.

So that's it. I'm ready to move on. I look through the obituary and articles about J.D. Salinger in The New York Times, and I wish him well on his journey. As far as I know, Salinger never met Oprah. He never crashed a White House dinner. He never needed to be famous. But Holden Caulfield takes on the world for him. The book awaits.

A no-huddle approach to writing

2010-01-27T15:17:00.000-10:00

Richie’s wife, Noelle, was the one who began asking a series of questions about the Colts and their no-huddle offense, and while Richie was patiently explaining to her how it works, and why Peyton Manning was dancing around before the play and shouting things and gesturing to his teammates like crazy, that’s when I got this brilliant idea that writers can have their own no-huddle approach to writing. At least I think it might be brilliant, although I haven’t told anyone about it. Until now.

Richie and Noelle had walked down the street to my place to watch the AFC championship game between the Colts and the Jets, with a trip to Miami and the Super Bowl awaiting the winning team. The Jets and their rookie quarterback had jumped out to an early lead, but here came Peyton and the Colts at the end of the first half with a touchdown to make it close again. Richie and I assured each other that the Colts would take care of business in the second half. Richie opened another beer and began to explain the no-huddle to Noelle during halftime, and that’s when it hit me, “The Great No-Huddle Approach to Writing.”

To appreciate the no-huddle, you have to think about the old huddle approach first. We’ve all seen it a million times. Eleven guys huddle in a circle; the quarterback calls the play; they break the huddle and jog to the line of scrimmage. Kind of dull. You see one huddle, you’ve seen them all. If hockey players stopped skating and huddled up before each charge down the ice, the fans would riot in protest. On TV they usually don’t even show the huddle, preferring instead to show a replay of the previous play, or a closeup of the coach, or the cheerleaders (Richie’s favorite).

I think some writers do this too. Before they write even one word they go into a huddle, with themselves, and decide how they’re going to tell the next story, or start the next chapter.Yikes, some writers even outline, and readers are lucky they don’t have to sit through that exercise! Get on with the story, the readers insist. And while one writer is outlining, the readers slip away and look for another writer who has a story ready for them.

But the no-huddle? Now there’s an intriguing approach to football, and to writing. Think of it as a form of improvisation. Instead of huddling up to call the next play, the Colts offensive players line up immediately. Then Peyton Manning goes into his act, surveying the defense, looking for weaknesses to attack, then calling out signals to various Colts players, who shift positions and force the defensive players to join the dance and do their own shifting. Some of Peyton’s signals are real, and some are decoys. It’s all rather cerebral. Manning has been called the most cerebal quarterback ever. When will the center hike the ball? Who knows? Only the Colts. They have 40 seconds from the end of the previous down (or 25 seconds after the ball is declared ready for play). Even the 25 seconds is an eternity.

Here comes the truly difficult part. For me, at least. How can the no-huddle offense inspire a no-huddle approach to writing? I believe that the key component is improvisation. The writer is like Peyton Manning standing in the shotgun, surveying the territory ahead. Where shall we go with this story? Let’s move some of the characters around first, prepare them for the action. The play clock on the scoreboard is winding down—20 seconds, 15, 10, 5—time to hike the ball. Time to begin the action. As Hamlet says, “The play's the thing.” Now the quarterback has the ball, the writer has his fingers on the keyboard, and the action begins.

Here’s the fun part, in a football game and in writing fiction.Players, and characters, begin to interact in unpredictable ways. The writer, like the quarterback, must be ready for a little chaos. If the football play, or the story, begins to break down, it’s time to improvise. Like the quarterback, the writer still has choices, although they are different from what they had so recently expected. Like the quarterback, the writer must never panic. Protect the ball, protect the story. Guide the team, and the story, on the path to a happy ending.

Speaking of happy endings, the second half is a great one for the Colts. Richie and Noelle and I are louder and more joyful in the words we shout at the TV screen. Noelle even makes a few enlightened comments about the Colts offense; Richie has coached her well. Peyton and the no-huddle offense put on a clinic for the poor Jets, and in the end there is no doubt which team deserves to go to the Super Bowl.

After the game, Peyton appears at the press conference in coat and tie, appearing unscratched and totally together. But when he speaks he says he’s grateful that he has two weeks until the Super Bowl. He needs the time because he’s tired. His mind is tired.

Of course! It’s not easy being the most cerebral quarterback ever. And it’s not easy guiding a story from beginning to middle to end. At the end you just want to give your mind a rest. Take a couple of days off. Like Peyton, you've earned it.

Attack of the killer cliches

2009-12-09T22:43:00.002-10:00

Right after Thanksgiving weekend Richie, my friend from up the street, came over to watch Monday Night Football. It's been a great season so far. After another sensational second half comeback the day before, Peyton Manning and the Colts were still undefeated, and we wanted to see how the other undefeated team, the New Orleans Saints, would do against the New England Patriots in the Monday night spotlight. The Saints did just fine, and we knew they would give the Colts a fight if they happen to meet at the end of the season.

But at halftime it isn't the Saints that Richie wants to talk about.Instead he begins telling me about what happened that Saturday night when he and Noelle went out to dinner. I turn the TV sound down and settle back to listen to Richie's latest adventure.

"So there we were," Richie says, "munching on tortilla chips and salsa and waiting for our food, and Noelle starts telling me about the book she's reading, the latest in a long, long line of romance novels. We have an unspoken agreement. I listen to her talk about the romance stories and she listens to me talk about sports. Sometimes at the same time.

But Saturday night I let Noelle do most of the talking. She's so cute when she's in the middle of a romance novel and excited about what's going to happen to the heroine, and she asks me what I think is going to happen to the heroine, and I'm like 'I don't know, but maybe this or that, and she deserves a happy ending,' and Noelle is like 'Of course she deserves a happy ending.'

"And just then, in the middle of the happy ending discussion, this couple sits down at the table next to ours, just to the side. Noelle checks them out, without staring, and so do I. They look like young professionals, maybe in their late 20s. Well dressed, well groomed, and a little nervous. Noelle looks at me and mouths the words 'First date.' Noelle forgets all about her romance novel and we stop talking and eat our tortilla chips as quietly as possible so we can listen in on the conversation at the next table. It's a game we play. No shame.

"Part of the game is that Noelle takes out a pen and begins writing notes to me on napkins. Things like 'Does she like him?' and then 'He likes himself.' I don't write notes, I just nod and agree with Noelle, most of the time.

"All the tables in our section have tortilla chips, and there's a steady chorus of chomping going on, but the guy is loud enough that we can hear every word. He's doing most of the talking, mostly about his job, and the woman is leaning forward a bit and showing him she's a good listener. The guy's job is not too interesting, except to him, but she's hanging in there as he goes on about it. So far.

"The guy's talking about a problem at his officeand he says, 'It is what it is.' And then he begins telling her about another problem at the office and he goes, 'It is what it is.' The third time he says 'It is what it is,' I notice the woman leaning back, her brave smile disappearing. The fourth time he says 'It is what it is,' she cringes. Her hands, resting on the edge of the table, begin to tense up.

"Noelle writes on the napkin, 'Trouble.' I nod and reach for a tortilla chip. Then the guy does a surprising thing. He stops and asks her about her job. He lets her talk for about 20 seconds and then he interrupts with 'That reminds me of this problem we have at my office,' and he's off again. The guy pauses just for a second to grab a handful of chips, and the woman leans forward and says, 'Well, it is what it is.' The guy totally misses the sarcasm and continues his boring office story.

"Then we notice that the woman is writing on a napkin. We can't see what she's writing, but then she holds the napkin in her hand to read it and says to the guy, 'Is it, what is it?' The guy gives her a funny look and she repeats the question, 'Is it, what is it?' This time he ignores her and goes on talking about his office. Noelle writes the woman's words on her napkin, and then writes them in reverse order, so it reads 'It is what it is,' and below that Noelle writes, in big capital letters, 'BRILLIANT!'

"Our food arrives about then, and we kind of tune out the guy at the next table. Noelle writes again and shows me the napkin. 'First date and last date,' it says. I nod and smile at Noelle, who is so good at this listen-to-the-strangers game. I'm thinking the game is over and we can just enjoy our dinner. But I'm wrong.

"The guy at the next table appears to be winding down, running out of office problems to talk about, and he's summing up (thank God!). 'But you know,' he says to his date, 'at the end of the day ...' I look at Noelle. I know this is one of her pet peeves. She looks at me, with that devilish grin of hers. She writes quickly on the napkin, 'Here we go again.'

"Now every other sentence from the guy is beginning with 'at the end of the day.' I lose count, but somewhere between a painful half a dozen 'at-the-end-of-the-days' and an unbearable full dozen, the woman does an amazing and wonderful thing. She stands up, stares at her boring date, and says, loud enough for everyone in our section to hear, 'It gets dark! It gets dark!' The guy is like 'What? What are you talking about?

"The woman doesn't answer at first. She looks at her watch. Noelle told me later that the woman looked at her watch because she was deciding whether she had any more time to waste on this guy. So the woman takes a deep breath and tells the guy, slowly and enunciating each word so he will get it, finally, maybe, 'At the end of the day ... it gets dark!'

"Then she picks up her bag and walks away, straight to the front door, accompanied by applause from Noelle, and myself, and a bunch of other people who have been listening to all this. The guy has a kind of shocked look. Then he shakes his head and goes back to eating his dinner. He doesn't talk to himself, for which we are grateful."

"Good story," I tell Richie.

"It is what it is," Richie says. Then he ducks because I begin throwing popcorn at him.

What happens when a character takes over a novel?

2009-11-02T06:39:00.000-10:00

So here's a situation for you. Imagine you're writing a novel and it's starting out all right. You've written only the first three chapters, so you're not bogged down in the middle yet. You have a character you call Charley Meyers narrating the story first person and he's easy.

But ... and it's a very large but ... there's this other supporting character, a 19-year-old rodeo queen wannabe with big blonde hair and a bigger personality, and she's just about bursting to take over the story. Do you stop her? Leave her on the sidelines in most of the chapters?

Not me. I surrendered fast. At the beginning of chapter 4 Donna Cooper not only jumps into the spotlight, she begins narrating. Hey, I'm not going to jump in front of a blonde stampede. I let her run with it. Charley still has a number of chapters that he narrates, but Donna becomes the driving force in the novel, and she pretty much narrates any chapters she wants to. That was just fine with me.

Here's the opening scene from chapter 4 of Chasing Cowboys, where Donna decides to tell her side of the story.

Chapter 4: Donna
"Anything you can do, I can do better ..."
You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here, so I’ll tell you. My name is Donna Cooper and this whole writing thing started early on a Friday morning when I stopped by Celia Moon’s new coffee shop, the Stella by Starlight Bakery and Gourmet Coffee Emporium. I just call it Stella’s. That’s where I caught Charley Meyers writing in one of those little black composition books. He tried to hide it when he saw me, but I was too quick for him. I sat right down next to him and made him show it to me. Turns out he’d started writing about Cody West, the new guy at Parker’s, the one who’s really cute but not for me because I’m going with Darryl King and have my hands full at the moment.
“Oh look,” I said, “you’ve got me in the first chapter.”
“You weren’t supposed to see that part,” Charley said, but it was too late.
“Seems pretty accurate, I can’t complain.” I read some more. “Oh, here you are spying on Cody in the store. Did that really happen, when he met that Lacey person?”
“Every bit of it,” Charley said. “You were there, didn’t you notice?”
“Well, I wasn’t putting my nose in everybody else’s business. I did see her, but I was busy trying on hats and practicing my rodeo queen wave.”
“How’s that wave coming?”
“I’m almost there,” I said. “I’ll be ready for the pageant.”
“Good luck, I hope you win,” Charley said.
“Thanks, me too, but if I don’t I’ll just try again next year. It’s hard to win on the first try. But I want to win. But it’s hard. But I want to win so bad.” I looked through Charley’s writing book some more, then Celia brought me coffee and I asked her to surprise me with a pastry, something rich and sweet but not too fattening.
“The shop’s looking great,” I told her.
“Thanks,” Celia said. “How do you like the new sign?It cost a lot because the name’s so long.”
“Don’t change a thing,” Charley said.
Celia smiled. “Can’t afford to,” she said. Then she left to get the pastry. I went back to reading what Charley had written about Cody and Lacey.
“So,” I said, “what is this going to be, some kind of novel?”
“Yep, something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, ever since college.”
“I thought you went to college on a rodeo scholarship,” I said.
“True, but I took a lot of English classes.”
“Well, why don’t you write about rodeo? You must have lots of good stories from all those years you were riding broncs.”
“Maybe I will,” Charley said. “I’ll tell you what, if you make rodeo queen maybe I’ll write a book just about you.”
“Would you?” I said. “Like a big photo album, only with words?”
“Sure, and you can add the pictures. There should be one with you smiling, and one with you waving.”
“Heck,” I said, “that’s only one picture. I can smile and wave at the same time.” Charley laughed. I could always make him laugh.
“So tell me, Charley Meyers, what are you going to name this novel, the Cody one?”
“Been thinking about that,” Charley said, scratching his chin. “I think I’ll call it Chasing Cowgirls.”
“Not bad. How about Chasing Cowboys instead?”
“Depends on who’s chasing who,” Charley said.
“Whom,” I corrected him.
“Say what?”
“Who’s chasing whom,” I said, slower this time.
“Thank you very much.” He said it in a sarcastic way, but he was only teasing. Then he said, “Who’s the writer here anyway, me or you?”
Well, that’s exactly the moment that I got this big idea to write a book myself. Not that I have a lot of free time, what with running for rodeo queen and taking classes at UNR and keeping Darryl happy when he’s not working at his dad’s hardware store.But I thought I could squeeze in a couple pages here and there in my busy schedule. I’ve always kept a journal, ever since high school when Mrs. James had us all keeping journals. My journal is mostly full of rodeo queen stuff you wouldn’t be interested in. I think writing a novel must be a whole lot different though, but I wanted to do it anyway, partly because I’m very competitive and I wanted to show Charley that I could do just as well, or better than him, if I really focused on it. Mrs. James was big on focusing. I’ve been focusing mostly on making rodeo queen lately, but it’s good to take on new challenges in life.
“Okay, Charley,” I said, “you go ahead and write your Chasing Cowgirls book. Just promise me one thing.”
“What’s that?” He looked a little worried.
“No big thing, just let me peek at it now and then.That’s all.”
“Sure, why not?” Charley appeared relieved. “You’ll be my first reader. You can correct all the grammar too.”
“Be glad to,” I said. “Hey, Charley, do you think Lacey has a boyfriend already?”
“I’d bet on it. Lacey’s a city girl, so she probably has a city boyfriend. Hard for a cowboy to compete, especially if he’s not a real cowboy.”
“Poor Cody,” I said, “going to all that trouble. I’d hate to see him get shot down.”
“Let’s just see what we can do,” Charley said.“Maybe Cody will have better luck than I’ve had.”
“I’m not feeling sorry for you, Charley Meyers,” I said, waving my index finger back and forth at him.“Don’t even try it. You told me you’ve known lots of women.”
“Well, there are different prizes in life. Some are better than others.”
“No, no, no,” I said, waving my finger again. “Don’t go feeling sorry for yourself. You’ll give yourself more wrinkles. And you have enough already.”
That shut him up. When we finished our coffee and pastry I said goodbye to Celia and gave Charley a peck on the cheek. Then I got in my truck and drove straight to the nearest store that had composition books. I bought half a dozen, for a start. I figured it would take one or two just to catch up with Charley, and the rest to pass him in the book writing competition.

Romance in the checkout line: Jen ... Cosmo ... and are you drawn to drama

2009-10-07T08:11:00.006-10:00

We’ve all been there. The other night it was my turn, again. Waiting in one of the giant Kapahulu Safeway’s hundred checkout lines. It’s an interesting place to read. You learn a lot about other people’s lives, and how life is not so wonderful after all for celebs, what with romance going bad, and Brad having to sleep on the couch and all.

So there I am in line. The shopper ahead of me is having a problem with a debit card, so I have time to listen to the tabloids screaming at me from their racks. I only read two headlines, however, because those two are just about perfect.

“Jennifer Anniston Wants a Baby NOW!” reads the first one, and then, right there on the cover of the tabloid next to it, I see a large photo of Jen with a nice little “bump” and the headline “Jennifer Pregnant at 40!” Fast work, Jen, and I’m thinking that maybe the next headline should read “Jennifer Anniston Wants World Peace NOW!”

My favorite checkout magazine is Cosmo. I have subscribed to this amazing publication three different times in the past ten years, strictly as research. Each article suggests a new character, or a new romantic complication, for my short stories.There’s no end to the romantic complications. Looking for a way to get your character into some romantic trouble? Cosmois there to help you.

When I decided to write a short story about a man who marries a Cosmo girl I didn’t need to invent any of the headlines that appear in the story. In the spirit of the Cosmotitles I called the story “Seven Ways to Tell If You Married a Cosmo Girl.” Here’s an excerpt from the story, which appeared in Bamboo Ridge’s issue #91.

This is way #3, which falls between way #2 (“The Reference Library”) and way #4 (“The Tests Must Be Passed Before Bedroom Secrets Can Be Demonstrated”):

#3: The Cosmo Tests Never End

On Lucy’s night stand, right next to the latest Cosmo, a pocket calculator waits at its post, ready to add up the results of the latest test, and the tests never end. One month it’s “What Kind of Sexy Are You?” (I already know the answer to that one: Lucy is dangerously sexy). The next month it might be “Do You Feel Sexy?” (and if she didn’t feel sexy when she started the test she’s guaranteed to feel sexy by the end of it).

Just last month the test was “Are You Drawn to Drama?” Now I have never thought of Lucy as a drama queen. That’s not her style. She gets enough drama from the two soaps she admits to watching. After taking the Cosmo drama test, however, Lucy must have been intrigued by some of the dramatic possibilities, behaviors she had never tried before. Like the articles that reveal the amazing bedroom secrets, of course, the tests encourage trying new things. So Lucy did. All I know is that the day after she took the drawn-to-drama test I came home to a suddenly more dramatic Lucy.

“Lucy, I’m home,” I called out.

“I’m in the kitchen, Ricky,” came the reply. The kitchen? Not the bedroom? Were we going to have dinner first, preceded by a sophisticated cocktail hour and intellectual conversation? Was my Lucy finally changing?

I strolled toward the kitchen, suave as James Bond, wishing I were wearing a tux, imagining an icy Margarita awaiting me in the kitchen (my drink, not 007’s), Lucy eager to tell me about how she had visited Barnes & Noble that morning and discovered that there were other magazines than Cosmo, and what did I think about this global warning thing, and showing me the real book she had actually bought, and starting to read it to me and … then I reached the kitchen and my fantasy burst.

“We need to talk,” Lucy said. Uh oh. Instead of a Margarita and a book, she was holding … the large kitchen knife? My first thought was that the knife had something to do with salad.But why was it pointed at my heart? I kept my distance, foregoing the usual homecoming kiss.

“Talk?” I said. I looked at her face for clues, then at the knife, then back to her face. Both looked serious. I glanced quickly at the counter. No signs of a salad.

“Yes, I found out something today. Something …” She looked at the ceiling. Was she searching for a word, or was there something wrong with the ceiling? It looked all right to me. No cracks. No leaks. Then she looked back at me.

“Something disturbing,” she finally said. She nodded slowly, waiting for me to react. I looked back up at the ceiling. I wanted to talk about home repair issues, make some silly remark like Tim Allen, but I don’t think the audience was looking for comedy. Instead I began to nod with her. I felt like a bobblehead.

“Disturbing?” I said, still nodding.

“Very,” Lucy said, chopping the air with the big knife. One quick chop. Vegetables and husbands kept their distance. Actually the veggies were better off than I was at the moment, safe in their cool bin in the Amana.

“What’s wrong, darling?” I asked. The concerned husband.Clueless as usual, but showing concern. The “darling” part was good to throw in at such moments, of course. I saved my “darlings” for special occasions, and this seemed like one of them.

Lucy moved closer. I backed up a step, but was stopped by the counter. She moved closer. She lowered the knife, away from my heart, but now it was pointed at a delicate spot, just below my belt. I began to feel less like James Bond and more like a zucchini. Still handsome, but green and vulnerable. Lucy leaned in and whispered in my ear. “I found out that someone ischeating.” Then she moved her face in front of mine, staring into my eyes, waiting for my response. I stole a quick look downward and saw the point of the knife no more than an inch from my fly.

Think fast, I told myself. Let’s review. Someone is cheating.That’s not good. Normally I try to agree with Lucy whenever I can, to keep things smooth and calm. But what now? Was I supposed to confess? I had nothing to confess. I wasn’t cheating. Maybe with my eyes, but don’t all guys do that?Okay, I flirted a little with Danielle at the office, but that was completely innocent. Cheating? Not me. Think, dammit, think! What would 007 do now?

“Well?” She was still waiting. Then she raised her eyebrows.“Ricky, you’re sweating.” It’s true. I was.

“It’s the knife,” I said. It was burning a hole in my pants.

She ignored me. A drop of sweat dripped off my chin and onto the knife blade. I thought about zucchini again, how it looks all sliced up and ready for the pan, its length no longer so proud, reduced to a supporting role in a meal that nobody will remember for long.

“Don’t you want to know who’s cheating?” Lucy said. When she said the words “who’s cheating” she got this deliciously wicked look, like one of her bedroom looks, although the bedroom, at this point, seemed miles away.

“Of course, darling,” I said. I was using up my “darlings” fast.Soon I would have to switch to “sweetheart.”

Lucy turned sideways, showing me her profile. She held up the knife and studied its edge. I thought of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. I was no longer James Bond; now I was Michael Douglas. Except that I was innocent, damn it! Lucy paused, then raised the knife. She had my full attention. Then she lowered it … onto the counter. She smiled, an evil little smile. I felt sweat stinging my eyes. I looked quickly around the kitchen to see what other weapons were available to my darling. Ice pick? Blender? Nutcracker?!

Lucy moved in closer now. “It’s Craig,” she said.

“What’s Craig?”

“Craig is the one who’s cheating. Keep up.”

“Oh, it’s Craig.” Phew. God help Craig. Was there a nutcracker in his future?

“Who’s Craig?” I said.

“The dreamy guy. I told you about him.”

“I don’t know any Craig. Who’s he cheating with?” I didn’t care what Craig did, or who he did it with, as long as he was the one in trouble and not me.

“Jennifer. Craig’s cheating with Jennifer. And Madison just found out.”

“Jennifer? Madison?” Who were these people?

“Ricky, don’t you listen to anything I say? I told you aboutMadison just last week. Well, today she found out about the cheating. And tomorrow she’s going to do something about it, but she ran out of time today.”

“Ran out of time?” The sweat was slowing down, but now my head was spinning. Lucy had placed it in the blender and pushed the slow speed button.

“Sure,” Lucy said. “They only get sixty minutes a day. She’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”

“Oh,” I said. The blender stopped, mercifully, but my head felt grated. “One of your soaps then.”

“Of course, silly. What did you think I was talking about?” She didn’t wait for an answer. For the next half hour I listened to, and watched, Lucy’s dramatic retelling of Days of Our Hospital,or The Young and the Horny, or whatever it was. The ice pick and nutcracker stayed in the kitchen drawer. The zucchini lay peacefully in the fridge, in one piece, at least for now. The only ones who had to tremble now were Craig and Jennifer.Madison could do what she liked with those two cheaters. I was off the hook, although technically I had never been on it. I looked forward to the rest of the evening with my Lucy. Maybe we would have Margaritas before long. Isn’t that why God gave us the blenders?

HawaiiReaders.com, a new site for readers and writers

2009-09-23T03:49:00.003-10:00

It's alive! The Honolulu Advertiser's new website, HawaiiReaders.com, is out of the laboratory today and walking about in the Internet world. The new site (http://www.hawaiireaders.com/) provides a great opportunity for Hawaii's readers and writers to interact.

In addition to news from local publishers, reviews, and an events calendar, the site has four writer's blogs, including mine, "A Little Romance." I will be posting on romance fiction every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I see this as a great opportunity to promote Hawaii's literature and Hawaii's writers, to explore the always intriguing world of romance fiction, and to interact with readers by way of the site's comments and discussion features.

My topics this week are "Anticipation" and, on Friday, "How much romance can you handle?" (featuring responses to that question from some members of the Aloha Chapter, Romance Writers of America).

In the coming weeks I plan to write on a wide range of topics, including:

1. Romantic vampires (is it socially acceptable to bite and drink on the first date? ... with a guide to the Twilight series from Cami Nihipali ... thank you, Cami!).

2. Romance in tough times (why does romance sell even more in hard economic times?)

3. Earning the happy ending (why do lovers have to go through hell to get to heaven?)

4. Read the book, see the movie (a look at a few classics: Gone With the Wind, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice)

5. Feeding the Romance (What makes a good romantic dinner? Do romantic characters stop to eat?)

6. Designing Woman (an interview with Stephanie Chang on book design)

7. Local romance in Lee Cataluna's Folks You Meet in Longs

8. Romance with an edge: The Breakup Queen

9. Judging romance by its covers (a visit to the the romance shelves at Bestsellers in downtown Honolulu)

This is just a taste. I invite your suggestions and urge your participation! Please leave comments on the blog and join in the discussions, and please start spreading the news to your friends. Check out the book events calendar. If you have something to add to the calendar please let me know.

Mahalo to the Honolulu Advertiser and the Hawaii Book Publishers Association for bringing this new creature to life!

is anticipation making you late?

2009-08-19T10:00:00.000-10:00

You may be old enough to remember a 1980 commercial for Heinz ketchup that featured Carly Simon in the background singing "Anticipation." Someone held a ketchup bottle upside down and waited, and waited, and waited for the ketchup to ooze out. Message: Heinz is thick, and worth waiting for. You can find the commercial on YouTube. Just search on "Carly Simon ketchup."

Carly Simon's words include "Anticipation, anticipation, is making me late, is keeping me waiting." Making you late? Really? Come on, it's just ketchup. In the commercial anyway.

But what if we use ketchup not as a condiment but as a metaphor? Let's say ... oh, I don't know ... as a metaphor for love and romance. Now there's something that's better than thick ketchup on your fries, although romance is not always waiting for you conveniently in aisle 5 of your favorite supermarket.

Isn't that one of the great features of romance, the anticipation? Whether we're reading romantic fiction, or perhaps chasing romance in our lives (or being chased by it), there are all those delicious moments, hours, and days, when we anticipate the experience: wondering, waiting, finally meeting, wondering some more, flirting with romance until it either runs away or draws us in like a powerful magnet (shifting metaphors here, so hold the ketchup for a second).

We look at the ketchup in the bottle and anticipate its rich sweetness, the way it looks on the fries, the way it will taste on our tongue. If the fries are hot and the ketchup is cool, that's the best.

So which senses do fictional characters use in their romantic journeys? Which senses do we use in ours? All of them. First we see the object of our romantic anticipation ... unless we meet first on the phone, and then it's a voice and we hear. Later there is the first touch, perhaps a handshake (which can reveal so much), first scent (stock up on good soap, and use it often!), and first taste (maybe just a nibble on an earlobe, or a licking of a neck, or the taste of that first kiss on the lips that makes you forget all about ketchup and fries).

And before experiencing these sensations, before you know the sound of her voice or the taste of her lips, there is the anticipation of those sensations. We are creatures of imagination. Before the fireworks begin, the romance is born in our minds. Before the fictional characters light up the pages of a novel, the romance is born in the mind of the writer, and born again in the mind of the reader.

So bring on the fries. Bring on the ketchup. Bring on the romance. As the Heinz commercial reminds us, the taste is worth the wait.

low hanging fruit

2009-08-12T08:11:00.007-10:00

"Low hanging fruit." Easier to pick. There for the taking. Why venture higher when there's good fruit you don't even need a ladder for, or maybe just a short ladder?

I hear that phrase now and then in different contexts, often from someone on the radio or TV. When they use the familiar phrase do they see the image in the metaphor? Do they see a tree with low hanging fruit, and perhaps someone picking?

When I hear "low hanging fruit," an image of a mango tree immediately flashes in my head. Not just any mango tree, although where I live in Kapahulu/Kaimuki, on the island of Oahu, there are beautiful, fantastic Hayden mango trees on every block. I see a mango tree that is no longer there. It's the large old mango tree that used to grace the front yard of a sturdy Japanese-American home built by the family patriarch and his brothers in the 1940s. I came to know the tree because I had met and quickly married the younger daughter.

After a couple of years on Maui, I moved with my homesick honey to Honolulu, where we found an apartment just a couple doors down from that family home, and the tree whose branches gave shade to the whole front yard. We had moved in January, so I enjoyed watching the fruit develop on the great mango tree. On into the spring I anticipated the day when the first red-yellow-green fruit would be ready to eat.

I already knew how ono the mango would be, sliced and juicy, often served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. What I didn't know was the whole process of mango picking. One warm Saturday morning my wife invited me to join in the first picking of the season. The older sister was there with her husband and their two kids. The grandparents presided over the ritual--Grandpa perched in the tree and Grandma standing at the command post on the front porch. Bamboo and aluminum poles awaited us, and a child's red wagon to hold the prizes.

The picking began. After standing innocently by as a spectator for a while, I was presented with the longest pole. I gazed into the heavens, trying to see what everyone was pointing at, and there they were, the high mangoes. Now all was made clear, revealed in an instant. My job was to reach the high mangoes. Had the family given the younger daughter (all 4'9" of her) the mission of finding a six-footer for this very day? I was too polite to ask, but I had my suspicions.

Several years later, when I set out to write my first short story to be set in Hawaii, I chose to tell the story of that experience, the mango picking, told from the first-person point of view of the unsuspecting Caucasian man who had married into the short Japanese-American family and then waited two years before moving from Maui to Oahu to fulfill his destiny as the picker of the high mangoes on that magnificent family tree. The result was "Mango Lessons," a story published later on by Bamboo Ridge Press.

Low hanging fruit? Don't talk to me about low hanging fruit. I believe we need to aspire to something higher. Something more difficult, but ultimately more rewarding. That ancient tree still lives in the pages of a book, in the words of a story that reminds me of the long strange trip I took in my life from Texas to Seattle to Maui, and ultimately to my island home on Oahu, where in my mind's eye I can still see the family gathered around the great tree, pointing to the large beauties waiting in the high branches. Someone else can take the low hanging fruit. Hand me the long bamboo pole.

yellow brick road

2009-07-30T10:28:00.033-10:00

Apart from the everyday world that I walk around in, there's another world I enter when I'm writing a new story. It's like a dream world because it has elements of my everyday world, but transformed somewhere in my mind into something strange and new. How strange varies from story to story.

In this dreamlike world, I quite willingly suspend my disbelief, and trust that most readers will be willing to do the same. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner guy, was the one who came up with "willing suspension of disbelief" as a necessity in the dream world of storytelling. In return for entertainment—a good story—the reader agrees to accept some fantastic elements in the story.

The storyteller must do the same, plunging headlong into the dream world, believing the story as it unfolds, taking a path less travelled and unpredictable, if only to see what's around the next bend in the road. Like Dorothy on the yellow brick road, for us the most important step is the first. All the adventures await her, and she must follow that famous path if she is find her way home. The writer, and reader, take that first step on the opening page of a story. Adventures await us, and we know that 15 or 20 pages later, or maybe 400 pages later, we will find our way home to the story's end. The end of the dream, the return to our waking world.

So let's think of that first page of the story as a first step on a journey. Everyone talks and writes about an opening page as a hook, and it is in a way, but that word has always had a sneaky, aggressive connotation for me. I imagine a writer in a long black cape skulking behind an innocent bookshop customer who has picked up a book and is seconds away from feeling a cold, heavy hook around her neck. Her only escape from the sinister hook is to buy the book and leave the store, thus freeing the writer to stalk his next victim.

How much better would it be to imagine the writer standing next to the reader, no weapon in hand, just browsing the shelves, then pointing down the yellow brick road of his story and inviting the reader to join him on the journey?

So here I am, having just finished dreaming, and writing, a short story about a young woman in Honolulu who is totally ruled by her emotions. I call it "The Manic Monday of Orchid Lefleur." This is a working title, but I doubt I will change it. Here's the opening page of that story (please don't call it the hook). This is my invitation to the reader to take that first step on the yellow brick road of this new story, to see what scarecrows and tin men and cowardly lions are waiting to befriend Orchid, what witches and flying monkeys are just around the next bend to threaten her, what poppy fields may delay her jouney home, and what great and powerful wizards live at the end of that road to give us all a happy ending. And so, gentle reader, I give you . . . Orchid Lefleur.

Orchid Lefleur—her real name—awoke on a warm Monday morning in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. On an island, that is. On Oahu, in fact, in the single bed with the amazing Technicolor dream quilt she had bought at the Aloha Stadium swap meet, the one that perfectly matched her colorful inner life, for Orchid was a young woman who was ruled, as they say, by her emotions.

And yet who could have foreseen that this particular Monday would bring all the rainbow colors to the surface, as if Roy G. Biv himself had climbed through the window into Orchid’s bedroom during the night and shone his red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet rainbow self on her like some blinding psychedelic spotlight? Who could have foreseen it?

Not Faith Lefleur, her mother, the sweet Japanese-American lady who had done such a splendid job of raising the older daughter but somehow failed miserably with Orchid.

Not Henri Lefleur, the blustery, hockey-mad French Canadian from Montreal who had met Faith at the University of Hawaii when they were undergraduates and were both immediately attracted because each was so exotic to the other.

Not Lilly Lefleur, the older sister, the refined daughter who had her emotions under tight control and was carving out quite a career for herself in finance, currently the teller with the most seniority at her American Savings Branch in Kaimuki. (Lilly—just a side note here—would have been named Guy Lefleur, after Henri’s favorite hockey star, had not her mother insisted on a more feminine name. Some might say that a young woman with the name Lilly Lefleur was destined to become a porn star, or at least dance around a pole on Keeaumoku Street, but they would be wrong.)

Not Brad Pitzer, Orchid’s lingering-but-not-for-long boyfriend, who knew all about her emotions, first hand. Some said that Brad did not resemble the better known Brad Pitt enough to be worth the emotional investment of a long-term relationship, an opinion Orchid was beginning to share.

Not Deena-Anne Tamashiro, Orchid’s best friend since high school who was interested in Brad and had agreed to take him off Orchid’s hands. Orchid had second thoughts, however, when she found Deena-Anne and Brad entangled on the sofa that Saturday night when she went over to see Deena-Anne and discuss when would be a good time to hand off Brad but it had already begun. The green monster took over Orchid’s head and she had stormed in and made a big scene and then stormed out, and wouldn’t pick up when Brad and Deena-Anne kept phoning her that night and all day Sunday.

believing the story

2009-07-01T20:41:00.018-10:00

In the middle of Frank Delaney's novel Ireland, an engaging 560-page narrative about Ireland and Irish storytellers, there's one paragraph that jumped off the page at me and said "Take me home with you." Or perhaps it whispered "Kiss me, I'm Irish." Whatever. But it's a memorable paragraph for all writers, and readers, and here it is.

A story has only one master—its narrator; he decides what he wants his story to do. I know, I have always known, what I want my stories to achieve—I want to make people believe. Believe what I tell. Believe in it. Believe me. Belief is the one effect I'm always looking for, and I apply every device, every pause, every gesture, every verbal nuance and twirl, to that end. To achieve it, I myself have to believe; if I don't, who will? I must believe ancient Ireland was as I describe it. The swords really did ring loudly off the shields. And the armor surely gleamed in the sun.

It’s just one of thousands of paragraphs in a novel chock full of delightful Irish stories-within-the-big-story, but there it is on the top of page 278, like a gold nugget that I discovered when I turned the page.

The paragraph is the beginning of a chapter-long letter written by the master storyteller, an elusive oral storyteller whom our young protagonist pursues around Ireland, telling his own stories along the way. Most of the advice in the letter applies to the oral tradition, but much of it also shines a light into the dark corners of the written story.

The narrator is the master of the story. A fiction writer narrates his story, whether he uses third-person narration or lets one of his characters tell the story first-person. Even in the quiet telling of the written story, the voice of the narrator rings out.

It’s almost the first decision I make in creating a story—selecting the point of view. In “Pickles and Shawnilynn and Me at the Mall,” a short story about three 8th-graders who spend an afternoon at Kahala Mall, the voice of Anna, the “Me” of the title, sings from first sentence to last. She is the master of the story, and letting her narrate was the perfect choice, even if it meant much time spent asking friends and strangers about current teenage slang and favorite teenage shops at the mall, and then visiting some of those shops. Just a word of warning—the Hello Kitty shops (Sanrio Surprise at Kahala Mall, in case you want to verify this) are incredibly, and dangerously, pink. Sunglasses would have helped. My eyes were sore for days afterwards.

“I want to make people believe,” Delaney writes. “Believe what I tell. Believe in it. Believe me.” I read the paragraph in Ireland long after I wrote the “Pickles” story, but these words describe exactly how I felt about my short story as I was writing it. Part of the believing deal is getting the setting and details right. Yes, Carl’s Jr. is right next to the Kahala Theatre movies at the mall. Yes, you can see school kids sitting there eating their French fries and talking. And yes, you can go to Claire’s and buy blueberry nail polish. After the movie your mom might pick you up in front of Long’s. Easy to believe.

“To achieve it,” Delaney continues, “I myself have to believe; if I don’t, who will?” Absolutely true. The writer is the first reader. He must convince himself first. I carried Anna and her two best friends around in my head for weeks before I wrote a word of their story. And as I began to write the story she became more real.

Then I had a chance to read the “Pickles” story aloud for the first time to a group of writer friends, in a workshop on voice. As I read Anna’s story, she became more real to me than most of the teenagers I’ve met. She was in my head, and I was riding along inside her head, at least for one Saturday afternoon at Kahala Mall, as she and Pickles and Shawnilynn watched the Ratatouille movie and Anna told about the big surprise and the super cool stuff that happened at the mall. Of course I believe.

Frank Delaney’s Ireland is a hymn to the joy of storytelling. Now there’s a phrase I want to take home with me, “the joy of storytelling.” If the story doesn’t bring me joy, how can I expect it to bring joy to a reader? Or a listener, for now that I think of it, I realize that my favorite stories are also great read-aloud stories. Give me a good narrator, the “master” of the story, let me hear that narrator’s voice as the story spins out, draw me into the story, in from the cold, and I am home free.

“Pickles and Shawnilynn and Me at the Mall” is scheduled for publication in October 2009 in the next collection from Bamboo Ridge Press in Honolulu (Anna’s hometown, by the way, and home to Kahala Mall and the frightening pink shop).

in praise of small moments

2009-06-05T07:44:00.007-10:00

There’s a short scene in Fargo that nobody talks about much. It’s not one of the big scenes that everyone who sees the 1996 Coen brothers film remembers. Not one of the action scenes, like the kidnapping of the car salesman’s wife, or the sporadic bumbling violence of the two hired kidnappers, or the woodchipper scene and chase on the ice near the end of the film.

No, the final scene is a quiet little moment, in bed with the heroine, Marge Gunderson--a very pregnant small-town police chief (Frances McDormand in her Oscar-winning role)--and her husband, Norm, who has submitted his painting of a mallard in a competition for future postage stamps.

And no again, it’s not a sex scene. But it’s very much a love scene. In this final scene of Fargo the husband and wife lie close together in bed and talk, just talk, and it’s so sweet and real and the antithesis of the earlier violent scenes that it’s thoroughly satisfying to watch. It brings the film to rest on a note of peace and order restored in the warmth of home and the marriage bed. It’s our payoff at the end of a long and bumpy ride. Here’s the complete scene:

__________________________

A BEDROOM

We are square on Norm, who sits in bed watching television.

After a long beat, Marge enters frame in a nightie and
climbs into bed, with some effort.

MARGE

Oooph!

Norm reaches for her hand as both watch the television.
At length Norm speaks, but keeps his eyes on the TV.

NORM

They announced it.

Marge looks at him.

MARGE

They announced it?

NORM

Yah.

Marge looks at him, waiting for more, but Norm's eyes stay
fixed on the television.

MARGE

... So?

NORM

Three-cent stamp.

MARGE

Your mallard?

NORM

Yah.

MARGE

Norm, that's terrific!

Norm tries to suppress a smile of pleasure.

NORM

It's just the three-cent.

MARGE

It's terrific!

NORM

               Hautman's blue-winged teal got the
      twenty-nine cent. People don't
   much use the three-cent.

MARGE

               Oh, for Pete's - a course they do!
     Every time they raise the darned
   postage, people need the little stamps!

NORM

Yah?

MARGE

When they're stuck with a bunch a
the old ones!

NORM

Yah, I guess.

MARGE

That's terrific.

Her eyes go back to the TV.

MARGE

... I'm so proud a you, Norm.

Norm murmurs:

NORM

I love you, Margie.

MARGE

I love you, Norm.

Both of them are watching the TV as Norm reaches out to rest
a hand on top of her stomach.

NORM

... Two more months.

Marge absently rests her own hand on top of his.

MARGE

Two more months.

Hold; fade out.

_________________________

I love these small moments in film and fiction and music and art. It’s easy to miss them. Don’t blink. But they are worth our attention, and worth returning to. That’s why I want to write a few small essays this summer about the kinds of small moments and details that brighten a story or a musical piece, a movie or a painting. They have a way of charming us, of drawing us in.

In fiction they can give us a sudden insight into a character, or a relationship. Or they can simply delight us in themselves, perhaps like a found object, a small shell on a beach. These small moments, small scenes, appear in many different forms. The story-within-a-story is one common form. A dream, which is a type of story-within-a-story, is another. Some small scenes appear to have no direct connection to the main plot, and they challenge us as petite riddles to make the connection. Sometimes the small moments are all about a minor, secondary character, someone who may not appear anywhere else in the narrative. This walk-on has his moment in the spotlight and then moves on, but if the scene is done right we don’t forget him.

In a painting sometimes our eye is drawn to a detail, perhaps a person, or something, in the background. Soon we are puzzling over that part of the work, studying the clues that keep us from turning away and moving on. In music, say in a favorite song, there is a word or phrase, a small moment in time, that we anticipate, experience one more time, and then carry that moment with us through the rest of the song, and beyond.

Fiction writers, who are told to focus on the big scenes, the big moments in the story, need to pay attention to the small scenes as well. They give the reader, and the writer, a chance to breathe, to stroll along a side path before returning to the main highway of the plot, where characters chase each other until something big happens. I think those small scenes are a little like coffee breaks, when we sit down with a friend and tell small stories (within the larger stories of our lives), or talk about our dreams, or maybe just say, “Norm, that’s terrific!” or “Every time they raise the darned postage, people need the little stamps!”

a poem for summer

2009-05-08T16:58:00.006-10:00

Here's a poem of mine to celebrate the imminent arrival of another summer. Try reading it aloud, and slowly. After all, summer is a time to slow down, to cool our jets, to savor the moment.

“Melon”

Two men on a porch,
old friends, old friends,
fifty years and more,
in a town left far behind,
taking it slow and easy,
making it last.

“What’s your hurry?”
one of them asks
as I walk by,
my usual pace,
on my way
to someplace else.

“Come on up,”
he says with a wave,
his hand flowing smooth
through the summer air,
drawing me in,
right up the walk.

“You’re one of those
burnin’ daylight men,
aren’t you?” And I laugh.
”Not much daylight left,”
he says, “not much to burn,
I reckon.”

“I guess not,” I say.
“Come have some melon then,
here’s a chair,
cool your jets,
as my grandkids say.”
I smile and nod, my jets cooling down.

“Charley,” he says,
and his friend looks up,
melon juice on his lips.
”What?” Charley says.
”Cut the man some melon,
that’s what.”

“OK, Al,” Charley says,
and he takes the knife,
small and beat up but sharp,
the world’s best surgeon at work,
the honeydew his patient,
its life in his skilled, weathered hands.

He cuts a generous slice,
holds it before me
like the magi’s gift,
for me, a stranger
on their ancient porch,
and waits for me to taste.

There are no plates, no forks,
no napkins, nothing but
the melon and the three of us.
They watch me bring it to my mouth,
the light green sweetness on my tongue,
and me humming as they smile.

“Good melon,” Al says.
“The best,” Charley replies.
I cannot speak, only hum,
the melon possessing me,
the chair my home,
the porch my world.

“You never had melon
like that before,”
Al says, and he licks his lips,
and Charley cuts me another slice
and one for Al
and one for himself.

And so it goes,
as the daylight fades,
and there we are
between day and night,
and I have traded
one journey for another.

By the time the fireflies
light the yard
another melon has appeared,
larger and sweeter than the first,
and Charley hands me the knife
and tells me all his surgeon tricks.

“Good melon,” Al says.
“The best,” Charley replies.
And then they sit back,
the melon endless like this day,
and close their eyes
and listen to me hum some more.

take five

2009-04-25T10:12:00.005-10:00

"Take Five” is many things, from the title of a classic jazz piece—composed by saxophonist Paul Desmond and made famous by Desmond and the Dave Brubeck Quartet as the first jazz instrumental to sell a million copies—to, on a much smaller stage, the title of a column that I write for Words of Paradise, the newsletter of the Aloha chapter of Romance Writers of America.

The phrase, as we shall soon see, also has meaning for writers, God bless them and their smoking keyboards. Why are those keyboards smoking? Maybe it’s because their masters are hot and heavy into yet another rewrite, perhaps the fifth rewrite. Maybe it’s “take five” because the first take, the first draft, was a start but only that, and now it’s months later and you’re in the middle of a fifth draft, and you could have listened to the Brubeck piece a million times until it was stuck in your head for all eternity, and you could have learned to play the piano and mastered the 5/4 time of “Take Five,” but you didn’t because you’re lost in yet another draft of yet another story. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing. It’s in my blood and bones.

“Take five,” of course, is simply a way of saying “take a break.” Take five minutes and then come back. The original Brubeck recording of “Take Five” lasts five minutes. It’s as cool as Desmond’s sax, and the seldom heard lyrics, composed by Brubeck and his wife Iola, open with these cool lines: “Won’t you stop and take a little time out with me, just take five; Stop your busy day and take the time out to see I’m alive.”

To take five, then, is to take a little time out from your day to do something vital but often overlooked.

I usually think of time management in terms of hours, thinking “here’s what I can accomplish in the next hour,” beginning when the big hand is on the 12. We get 24 of those each day.

Looking at my watch, however, when I see all the numbers that mark the big hand’s hourly journey, beginning with one, I begin to see time in five-minute segments. “Here,” time says, “take five.” Then five minutes later, time says, “Take five more.” It’s as if time tosses us a nickel tip, and then feels a bit cheap and returns to the table to toss us another nickel. But time keeps on tipping. The nickels keep landing on our table.

What can we do in five minutes, besides listen to “Take Five” or take a short break from whatever we’re in the middle of at the moment? Here’s a short list. Just one list of many. Feel free to make your own.

1. Dream.

2. Dream some more.

3. Write down the dream, as a story title.

4. Give the dream to a character.

5. Write to find out what happens to the dream.

That’s five nickels, 25 minutes. That last five minutes will be just a start, of course. The big hand makes one circle, then another, and another. Three hours later the story is all you can think of. It will be there the next day, waiting for you to follow it down the winding road of dreams. When you’re done, take five. You’ve earned it.

does romance have a chance?

2009-04-14T06:09:00.017-10:00

So there I was last Sunday, watching the final day of the Masters golf tournament. April in Georgia. Hypnotic just to take in the beauty of Augusta—its fame well deserved, unrivalled among golf courses, except perhaps for that part of Pebble Beach that runs alongside the mighty Pacific. All that green, green grass, the azaleas, the water, the classic stone bridges, the white bunkers, the tall trees. Ah yes, so relaxing to sit back in a recliner, with a cool drink in hand, and observe spring in Augusta. Listening to the soft music of birds in the pines.

It’s all perfect. But then they put the golfers on the course and give them clubs and little white balls to try to hit down those long fairways and onto the emerald greens, and see who can get home with the fewest number of strokes. Without having a stroke, because it’s not so relaxing for the golfers. Especially if it’s late on a Sunday and you’re in a three-way playoff and you’ve already been through the wringer trying to get home on the back nine without totally falling apart. Especially if you’re Angel Cabrera and you’ve taken the scenic route with your tee shot on 18, the first playoff hole. Kenny Perry and Chad Campbell are both sitting pretty in the fairway, but you’re off in the woods, and your ball has come to rest behind one of those tall pines and there’s no way out, you’re toast, and the gods of Augusta have laughed at you and gone off to ride to glory with the other two guys.

You have no chance. All that work for four days, outplaying Tiger and Lefty, the two best golfers in the world, and now you’re behind a tree. Everyone expects you to just pitch out into the fairway, but you’re looking into the woods. More trees. You can’t be serious. What’s your plan, to say a prayer and try to get through those trees and on up the fairway?

Spectators have scattered. Make way for the crazy man! Angel is like a man suddenly lost and looking for a miracle. What is he thinking? Nothing to lose? He stands next to the tree, plants his feet, and prepares his club for the Hail Mary. I hold my breath. He brings the club down hard on the ball and it flies away. Then we hear the sound of golf ball on wood. He’s hit a tree. His next shot, no doubt, will be from another zip code; is that the 10th hole on the other side of the woods? The camera zooms in on Angel’s face. His eyes are big. What has happened? Has his prayer been answered?

And then the camera spots the little white ball in the green fairway, its journey through the woods over now, and it’s in the 18th fairway, and the gods have laughed at Angel and given him a break. Maybe they will let him scramble in on this first playoff hole just to see what happens. What happens is that Perry and Campbell have trouble hitting the green. Angel, however, having seen the tall pines up close and personal, having emerged from the woods a wild man but somehow blessed by the gods, proceeds to show the other two guys how to finish a hole. He scrambles to make par. Campbell misses his par putt and is eliminated. Perry and Angel head for the second playoff hole, and the gods—having seen something they like from the Argentinian they call El Pato, the Duck—ride with Angel Cabrera to glory and the Masters championship. "Here," the gods whisper in his ear, "have a green jacket."

Quite a ride. An amazing Masters finish. Tiger and Lefty, playing together and attracting huge galleries, charging all day to catch the leaders and coming up just short. Then three mortals, underdogs like the rest of the world to Tiger Woods, battling down the stretch. And on that first playoff hole, lost in the pines, his hopes apparently shattered, at that moment the biggest underdog of all, Cabrera going for an improbable, desperate shot, and taking us all with him on an unlikely finish.

I watch as they replay that shot. Again he attempts the impossible. Does Angel have a chance? You’d have to be a little wild and crazy yourself to bet on him at that point, although the odds would be tempting.

Why do I think of that moment as romantic? Maybe because there’s something wonderfully romantic about challenging the gods, shunning the safe, logical path, and opening a window for luck. Sports fans for ages have cheered on the underdog. We love unlikely happy endings. Does romance have a chance? Sometimes. There are so many obstacles in its way. Maybe it’s a game for underdogs. Maybe the gods smile on us when we dare to be a little wild and crazy. Just a lesson I learned last Sunday watching an Angel.

dining alfresco ... in two takes

2009-03-09T22:09:00.006-10:00

The following is in response to the writing challenge in my February 4th blog on hearing voices.

Take One:

Again with the menu. He always orders. He has impeccable taste. We always sit at this table. He tips the maitre d’ (which is short for maitre d’hotel, a fact of which he reminds me periodically, as if I need reminding). He always sits facing the view, and I sit facing the other people, which is fine with me because I want to study the other people. Occasionally I study him, but not for long. He oozes predictability. You could call it stability, or dependability, but what I see oozing from him is predictability.

We are dining alfresco, and naturally he reminds me from time to time that in the 16th century alfresco meant “in a cool place.” It is cool out here, on the patio. “In Hawaii,” he reminds me, “we would call it a lanai.” Well, yes, we would, if we were in Hawaii, which we are not, and never will be. Couples go there on their honeymoons, or anniversary trips. I don’t see a lanai in our future, no honeymoon, but ... perhaps, just maybe, an anniversary.

One day we will be at sitting at this table, much as we sit now, the candle the same, the buildings the same, the stars the same, and he will put down the menu and remind me that this is an important day in our relationship, the third anniversary of our first date, at this very restaurant, where we sat at this very table. Yes, and he first ordered my dinner, and I first studied him carefully. Yes, he will proclaim, a little too grandly, our third anniversary, and I will gasp. He will take this gasp as a sign of delight, of approval, but he will be wrong. His judgment, unlike his taste, is not impeccable. I study the candle. Dining by candlelight, how romantic. Perfect for a first date, a time when all the bright illusions and hopes of a new relationship float above our heads like small balloons that believe they will live forever.

Do not misunderstand me. I am not complaining. But one day I will simply say no. No, thank you, you are kind to ask, but I cannot accept. I will not dine alfresco with you again, or watch you tip the maitre d’, or watch you study the menu. Au revoir, I will say, and remind him that it’s what they say in France, or if we were in Spain I would tell him adios, or in Italy arrivederci, or in England cheerio, or in Japan sayonara, but we will be in America, where “so long” works just fine. And then I will be strangely sad for a while. And I will miss the lobster bisque.

Take Two:

I like a man who takes charge. He tells me the lobster bisque is excellent here, and I say fine. He seems to have impeccable taste. I like how he tipped the head waiter (he called him the maitre d’, which he said is short for maitre d’hotel) so we could have this wonderful table under the stars.

Then he tells me that he has just ended a long relationship with a woman who suddenly said goodbye one day. He chose not to ask her to stay. So I lean over and pat his hand (and notice that he has a really good manicure), and I tell him that when God closes a door he opens a window. Then I turn to look at the stars, and show him my profile, which is quite good I am told.

Then I ask him if he has ever been to Hawaii, or if he wanted to go some day, and if we closed our eyes we could imagine that there were tiki torches everywhere, and Hawaiian music, and wouldn’t that be wonderful. And then I sit back and let him talk some more, and he tells me that we are dining alfresco, and what that meant in the 16th century, and I am like so impressed.

hearing voices

2009-02-04T19:21:00.008-10:00

Lately I’ve been hearing voices. Again. Voices in my head. But don’t get nervous. The voices aren’t telling me to do bad things. They’re just talking to themselves, or having conversations, and that’s absolutely a good thing. If you write fiction, telling stories that need to be true but need not be factual, you want characters in those stories. You want your characters to talk to each other, so they might as well talk in your head. I draw the line at talking back to these characters, however, especially in public.

On March 7, at the RWA Aloha Chapter meeting, I will be leading a fiction writers workshop on voice. We will be looking at the writer’s voice, the narrator’s voice, and the character’s voice. How do they differ? Do they ever overlap? And how do you find your voice? It’s probably not something you lost, but rather something you discover over time. Years, in fact.

The workshop will include a special section on book design with graphic artist Stephanie Chang, who will talk about imagining your book and matching design with voice. Stephanie and I have been working on the design for my contemporary romance Chasing Cowboys.

If you’re looking for a homework assignment, here’s one. Imagine a young man and a young woman seated at a table. The man appears to be studying a menu. The woman doesn’t have a menu. Is she talking? What is she thinking? There’s a lighted candle on the table, buildings in the background, and stars in the night sky. A romantic setting. So what’s missing? We need voices! Make them talk. You have the characters and the setting. Now write the scene. Give them distinct voices. Give each an agenda perhaps; decide what it is each one wants. First date? Last date? Is there trouble ahead, trouble behind?

In addition to the dialogue, decide on a narrator for this scene. You can go with a third-person narrator, or you may choose one of the two characters to be a first-person narrator.

Finally, try to give the scene these three things: (1) a tantalizing beginning, in the voice of the narrator or one of the characters, perhaps introducing some conflict or tension; (2) a middle in which the characters learn something or change in some way; and (3) a strong ending, a definite resolution. Don’t leave your reader hanging!

When your scene is written, test it. Read the scene aloud. Try reading all the lines of one character, then go back and read all the lines of the other character. This is your chance to fantasize about how the stage and screen lost a great actor the day you decided to become a writer instead. “And the Oscar goes to ...”

Then wake up and rewrite your scene. At some point in this process, listen to your own voice as you tell yourself that you are one creative genius. Just make sure that nobody’s around when you start talking to yourself.

Ratatouille and the creative process

2009-01-30T04:55:00.003-10:00

If you saw the Pixar animated film Ratatouille, about a rat who wants to be a chef in Paris, you’ve witnessed a shining example of creativity, one that filmmakers, cooks, and even writers can learn much from. In particular, one of the bonus features on the DVD is a 13-minute behind-the-scenes documentary, “Fine Food & Film,” a conversation with director Brad Bird and chef Thomas Keller.

Producer Brad Lewis, who worked with both men on Ratatouille, introduces the documentary by talking about the similarities between the acclaimed filmmaker and one of America’s great chefs: “When you see these guys work you start to see a similar not only sparkle in their eye, and how they do what they do, but also they’re really intense, they’ve got this attention to detail, and they’re very passionate about their work. So one’s about cooking, and one’s about making great movies, but there is this harmonic in their approach.”

As we see Keller at work in his restaurant kitchen, he begins by saying, “Anybody can cook. It’s just you have to have the desire, the determination to make something that you’re going to feel proud to give to somebody, and that emotional connection with somebody. I think you have to be emotionally attached to what you’re doing, and certainly, with food, it’s very easy because it’s something that nurtures.” Bird the filmmaker seconds this appeal to emotion: “You’re constantly trying to get the audience into the state of feeling and how things feel, rather than how things are.”

On the origin of creative ideas, Bird says, “Every idea comes about in its own way. I had an idea for a film that started with me hearing a song and thinking it was another song.” Keller tells the story behind one of his imaginative dishes, Oysters and Pearls: “Walking down the aisle of a grocery store and seeing a purple box of pearl tapioca, and you see a word that says ‘pearls’ and you associate that with an oyster. And then what comes from that is a dish .”

Bird says that he plays a game familiar to fiction writers, the what-if game: “Other things come out of just a thought that you have, of ‘What if?’ Or ‘Superheroes must feel defeated sometimes.’” Keller begins with the food: “And the food can be so inspiring. It comes in in its raw form. You think, ‘Okay what am I going to do with this?’”

Brad Bird talks about the creative state of mind, which is another familiar topic for writers: “The mistake that a lot of people make is thinking that you can force ideas to come. You can’t really. All that you can do is observe what kind of environment puts you in a creative state of mind and then try to create that environment.”

Bird and Keller both strive for spontaneity. In talking about animation, Bird touches on a quality that writers strive for in their storytelling: “It’s not a spontaneous act, but if you do it artfully, you get the feeling of spontaneous thought. If you do it well, it will feel spontaneous.”

Filmmaker and chef both praise their mentors, and stress the importance of having a mentor as you are learning your craft. Keller’s mentor was Roland Henin, a chef whom he met in the early ‘70s, in a private club in Rhode Island where Keller was working. Keller says, “And he made me understand that there was an emotional connection, and that I was actually cooking for somebody in a way that brought them pleasure.” Bird’s mentor was Milt Kahl, a great animator at Disney: “And he was tough. He was tough. He did it in a nice way, he wasn’t cruel to me, but he let me know absolutely where I was coming up short.”

At the end of the conversation, Bird touches on the question of audience, and the point that the first audience is the filmmaker: “If you think about what you’re doing logically, you are trying to invent what an audience that you likely will never meet will enjoy two years from now. But you can’t think of it that way. You have to think about it in terms of, ‘What do I want to see? What delights me?’ So I think that you’ve got to make something that pleases you and hope that other people feel the same way.”

Good advice there for all artists, I believe, including writers. When I write a story, I am the first reader, and I want to make myself smile, and laugh, and, at times, feel sad. If I feel a tear on my cheek when I’m at the keyboard, I know I’ve made that emotional connection with the characters in the story. The story is a new dish that I want others to taste. I fuss over it and tweak the ingredients and think about presentation and then plate the dish. I am like Remy, the ambitious young rat in Ratatouille, living to create something new and exciting.

this land is your land

2009-01-19T06:40:00.019-10:00

On the eve of a watershed moment in our country's history, 24 hours before Barack Obama takes the oath of office, I awoke this morning thinking of Woody Guthrie.

A young man from Okemah, Oklahoma, who had roamed and rambled through the country in the '30s with his guitar, Woody wrote a song in 1940 that's right up there with "America the Beautiful." Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen sang Woody's song at the Lincoln Memorial yesterday. Close your eyes and imagine you're hearing the words for the first time. Now imagine it's 1940 and it's Woody Guthrie's voice and guitar. The song begins with its refrain:

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

Each verse answers an unspoken question.  Each verse takes us with Woody on his journey through America.

As I was walking a ribbon of highway
I saw above me and endless skyway
I saw below me a golden valley
This land was made for you and me

And then there's that voice that Woody sang about, a voice that appears in most of the verses:
I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me
The sun came shining as I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
A voice was chanting as the fog was lifting
This land was made for you and me

Like "American the Beautiful," with its purple mountains and amber waves of grain, Woody's song gives us enduring images of our land. The "dust clouds" remind us that Woody traveled with the migrant workers who fled from the Dust Bowl of the '30s.  The last verse, however, is set in the city, amid the unemployment and doubt of the Great Depression:

In the square of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

The song doesn't end there, however, because the last verse is followed by the great refrain, sung twice this time, or as many times as we like. We can just keep singing that refrain until our voices give out and we have to get some work done.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

I hear that in his speech tomorrow Barack is going to ask us all to get to work.  The song will still be there, of course, the day after tomorrow, and the day after that, and as long as we keep singing it, or hearing it in our heads.  And if the tune gets stuck there, well, there are a lot worse songs to be playing over and over.

Woody got it right.  "This land's still made for you and me."  I believe that America belongs to those who love it, to those who treasure its beauty, to those who roll up their sleeves and work to make it better.

101 best sites for writers

2009-01-08T05:35:00.004-10:00

Each year Writer's Digest publishes its list of 101 best sites for writers. Did you miss the 2008 list? Not a problem. You can read it, and follow all the links, on the Writer's Digest website. Just google "101 best sites," which will also you give the bonus of a link to PC Magazine's list of best websites.

Looking for a comfortable New Year's resolution? One that's productive, easy to keep, and does not require giving up any of those wonderful guilty pleasures that we love to indulge? Resolve to visit one new site for writers each week. Bookmark the ones you would visit again and put them in a favorites folder in your browser. At the end of 2009 you will have 52 new sites. Chances are you will find others on your own.

If you're more ambitious, resolve to visit one new site for writers each day ... knock yourself out. Or one a month ... this is not a competition, and it's your life.

Speaking of guilty pleasures, here's a writing-related site that didn't make the Writer's Digest list (and another chance for me to use my favorite verb, "google"). Just google "HotForWords" and visit Marina Orlova's classroom. Marina, an outrageously attractive Russian English teacher living in the United States, is one of the biggest hits on YouTube. Her short video lessons on the origins of words are both entertaining and instructional. At her site you can click on "Words/Lessons" to see a word list and watch the videos. If all English teachers were like Marina, we would all have great vocabularies, or we would all be too distracted to learn anything.

I wish you all a creative 2009. Keep writing! And reading!

Caroline Kennedy and verbal tics

2008-12-30T11:07:00.021-10:00

Caroline Kennedy, who would like to be the next Senator from New York, taking Hillary Clinton's place, has started talking more in public. It comes with the territory, of course, and it's all part of getting to know the candidates before we vote, or, in this case, before the Governor appoints Hillary's replacement.

Talking in public--answering questions and not just reading from a script--is something that we wanted Sarah Palin to do when she became John McCain's startling choice for a running mate. Sarah was kept under wraps for a while, but once she did begin talking without a script, oh my. Some of us wanted to make her stop, and some of us (like my friend Richie, and Leno and Letterman and Tina Fey and all of us Saturday Night Live fans) wanted her never to stop talking. Those were heady times, as we learned more about how the Palin mind worked, and tried to imagine her as Vice President, a heartbeat away from being the first President Hockey Mom. Scary? You betcha! I know that my heart raced faster during those strange autumn days.

So now it's Caroline Kennedy's turn to speak off-script, and you know what, well, let's just say, you know, that she seems like a good and noble person, someone with, you know, great genes, of course, but, you know, she has this verbal tic that, you know, peppers every sentence. Aside from the endless "you-knows," she speaks well. Her sentences don't trail off into silence mid-sentence, like an Alaskan dog sled that has lost its way in the frozen tundra. Nor does she mangle the English language like a certain lame-duck President. In fact, I think it's kind of refreshing, you know, to find that a Kennedy is like the rest of us, you know, and hasn't hired a speech coach to teach her how to control her verbal tic, to find some other phrase to use while forming her answer, or to use silence and pauses.

Even Barack Obama, the most accomplished speaker to be elected President since that actor Ronald Reagan, has his verbal tics. "Well, look ...," Obama says, as he prepares to answer a question, and then we are treated to a brief silence, and we realize that he is actually thinking, that he is not about to repeat some vague generalization. This is a man who taught constitutional law for ten years at the University of Chicago, who stood in front of a group of students who must have enjoyed watching his mind at work.

Obama I can listen to all day. And Caroline Kennedy I want to hear more from, so she is totally forgiven in advance for a million "you-know's." Sarah Palin can say "you betcha" and "golly" and all those colloquial expressions that are just more verbal tics and stalling while she waits for a correct answer, or any answer, to rear its head, like Putin coming into the air space over Alaska. They're still showing reruns of the Beverly Hillbillies on cable, but strictly for entertainment I'd rather listen to Sarah.

Some verbal tics, however, make me scream. My current pet peeve is "I mean." Athletes love this one. "How did you feel when you scored the winning touchdown?" I cringe even before I hear it. I know what's coming. "I mean," the athlete begins, and then throws in a dozen more "I-mean's" before the interview is over, mercifully. At those times I long for a commercial, any commercial to put me out of my misery. Sometimes, If nobody's around, I yell at the TV screen. "You mean?! Don't start your answer with I-mean! If you want to explain what you just said, then maybe you can say 'I mean.'" It's good to vent. I also find that my yelling drowns out most of the interview, so it serves a purpose.

Lately I hear "I mean" as a verbal tic drifting into the answers of some college professors and writers on TV. I mean, it's enough to make you want to, you know, just call up Sarah Palin and ask her if she ever, you know, got so mad at the folks on TV that she pulled out her rifle and shot up the screen. In one of my recurring daydreams I actually do call Alaska, and Sarah answers her own phone, and I ask her about shooting up the TV, and she tells me, "Oh, you betcha!"

Christmas news from Wasilla

2008-12-20T09:34:00.008-10:00

As I reported earlier, my friend Richie from up the street hasn’t gotten over his fascination with Sarah Palin. Even with the November election fading in the rear view mirror. It’s not that he agrees with everything she says, or even anything she says. He just can’t stop obsessing, anymore than he could ever stop bringing beer over to my place and watching NFL football on the big screen.

Just last Sunday I’m talking about Peyton Manning and the Colts, and how the amazing Peyton’s come back from his injuries to lead his team to the playoffs after a bumpy start, but I look over at Richie and he’s put his beer down and is gazing off into space.

“I wonder what Sarah’s doing this weekend?” Richie says, as if he’s talking about a mutual friend that he hasn’t seen for a few days.

“What?” I say, my discourse on Peyton’s stellar season interrupted. Then, to tease him, I say, “Sarah who?”

“Palin, you idiot,” Richie says, as if there’s only one Sarah in the world. “She hasn’t been in the news for a few days. I blame that crazy governor in Illinois, that’s all the news guys want to talk about.”

“Blagojevich,” I say. “The guy’s name is Blagojevich. And it’s big news. He tried to sell Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder. And his approval rating is lower than Bush’s, which isn’t easy.”

“Whatever,” Richie says. “I wish he’d just go away. Him and that hairy critter that lives on top of his head. What a dork.”

“Say his name,” I tell him. “I bet you can’t pronounce it.”

“I could if I wanted. All I said was I wondered what Sarah’s doing. Don’t start talking about Blaga-boy-zich.”

“Close enough,” I say. “So what’s new with Palin? You’re the expert on the subject. Any news since she pardoned the turkey?”

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Richie says, and he fishes in his back jeans pocket and pulls out a folded sheet of paper. He gives me a smug smile and hands me the paper. “Read this. You know that Internet friend I made in Wasilla? I told you about him. Sam McGee. The mechanic. He sent me their family Christmas newsletter. It’s got all the news of the year.”

“All about Sarah Palin?”

“Well, some of it. Just read it.” Then he leans forward, gives me his serious look, and says slowly. “If you’re going to understand a person … especially if they’re different … it helps to know where they come from.” Then he sits back and adds, “Janine … that’s Sam’s wife … Janine wrote the newsletter.”

So I unfold the newsletter, admire the red and green Christmas border, and start reading. Richie interrupts me with “Read it aloud,” so I do. And here it is, the McGee Christmas newsletter. Enjoy.

Merry Christmas to all our friends and relatives, here in the Great Land and to all you poor suckers in the Lower 48. (Just joking.) It’s been a busy year for the McGee gang. In case you didn’t hear, I went to Anchorage in June to update my beauty shop skills. When I got back to Wasilla my regulars at the Magnificent Mousse were lining up. Got me some new customers too, which made Wanda happy.

Sam’s business is going good, even with the recession. Folks have to drive. Sometimes on my lunch break I walk over to the garage and watch him work and hand him his tools. It always reminds me of when we started seeing each other. He’d be working on my Ford, and I’d hand him a tool, and then a can of Bud, and then another tool … so romantic. Next thing I knew we were engaged.

Let’s see, what else is new? Well, the twins are at Wasilla High School now. Can you believe it??? It makes me feel old, but Sam always tells me I’m not getting older, I’m getting better. Then he gives me a tuneup … I mean my truck (ha!) … and I make him a good dinner, and we end up renewing our nuptials. I feel so lucky.

Oh yeah, the twins. Well, Cord is on the Warrior JV football team, so we’re just as proud as we can be. He’s keeping up his C average, so that’s good. He has a girlfriend, but I promised him I wouldn’t put her in the newsletter, but she’s cute as a bug and if you know who I’m talking about I’m sure you’ll agree.

Cora is likewise off to a good start in high school. Her main goal is to make cheerleader, but we told her to concentrate on the books during her freshman year, which didn’t go over big but she understands, and we promised her we’d do everything to help her make cheerleader next year. Well, not everything. Not like that psycho cheerleader mom in Texas. But we are practicing every night in the family room, after her homework’s done, and I’ve been passing on my own tips from the time I was head cheerleader at WHS. Cora doesn’t have a boyfriend at the moment. Her dad is being very protective, if you know what I mean, but I just tell Cora to be patient and someday she’ll be head cheerleader and have a quality boyfriend, so she’s very hopeful.

I know that everybody is curious about Sarah Palin, because that was the big news in town this year, so I’ll just tell you some stuff here in the newsletter and please don’t ask me about her all the time. Well, where to start? She was the mayor here, of course, and there were folks who liked her (she did get elected) and folks who didn’t. And then she made Governor but she still kept her home in Wasilla, and there were folks who liked her and folks who didn’t. Then she ran for Vice President (oh my God, that was exciting), and there were folks who liked her and folks who didn’t. Of course you see her around Wasilla. She’s just folks. Except that Sam and I don’t have bodyguards. I don’t have her wardrobe. Wanda used to do her hair, but that was before I started at the shop. All Wanda says about Sarah’s hair is “there’s a lot to work with.” She has a rule that we don’t talk politics or religion in the shop. But it is OK to talk about everybody’s hair. And nails.

OK, I’m out of room here, so I’ll just wish you all a Happy New Year. Hang in there in 2009 and we’ll all get through these hard times. Remember, you’ve always got your family. And the Good Lord will provide.

Love,
Janine

P.S. Sam says there’s a tuneup special on at the shop, to the end of December (for those of you who are in town).

I fold the newsletter and hand it back to Richie. “Thanks for sharing,” I tell him. He says “glad to do it.” We go back to watching the game. I’m hoping that there won’t be any news flash interruptions from Illinois. Richie might explode.

Richie's big dilemma

2008-12-02T22:53:00.009-10:00

My friend Richie from up the street came over on that Tuesday morning in November and we rode together to the place where we would finally, finally get to vote. Finally.

After the longest year of my life, following the Presidential campaigns on TV, watching about a thousand debates, listening to Obama and Hillary and McCain and all those other guys, not to mention all the TV commentators who sometimes told us something we didn’t know but mostly just argued with each other. Richie would watch the arguments and hope for a fight to break out, maybe a few chairs being thrown around, and he said that Keith Olbermann could take Pat Buchanan out in about 30 seconds, but it was only arguing, and no chairs ever got thrown.

Whenever a debate was on, Richie would show up at my door, bringing a cold six pack and a newly acquired passion for politics. I never heard everything they said in the debates because Richie would be talking about promoting celebrity fights between the candidates. He would wonder out loud what would happen if you put, say, Hillary and Barack in the same ring, or maybe in one of those cages, and no rules. I’d tell Richie that Barack was younger and more athletic, and Richie would insist it wouldn’t be a basketball game, that Hillary would be tougher and would bite and claw, and then I’d point out that Barack was quicker and had a longer reach, and Richie would say that Hillary would have pointed shoes and would know how to use them, and then I’d give up and start listening to the debate again, and Kucinich would be talking about UFOs, and then Richie would ask me who I thought would win if they put Kucinich in the ring with an alien. And so on.

Then at the end of August that McCain guy surprised us all by naming a woman as his running mate. And not just any woman. We heard her name, Sarah Palin. Then we saw her photo (Richie studied the photo, then sat back and said "Desperate Housewives"). Then we began to learn things about her, like she was a runner-up for the Miss Alaska beauty queen, and mayor from a small town we’d never heard of. And then we heard her speak. We heard that voice, for the first time. She was folksy, all right, talkin’ county and droppin’ those g’s left and right. I looked over at Richie and his jaw had dropped and his eyes were big and I asked him if he was all right and he didn’t say anything. I think what he was was hypnotized.

So all through September and October, as the general election got closer and the campaign more heated, Richie focused on Sarah Palin. He read everything he could about her. He showed me her photos as a high school basketball player, and beauty contestant, and hunter. He showed me the fake photo from the Internet, with Sarah Palin’s head on the body of a well endowed woman in a bikini. I think he carried that one around in his wallet.

Richie stopped talking about celebrity fights. We agreed early on that Obama would take out McCain, in the ring or in an election. In fact, we were both big fans of the tall skinny guy from Hawaii with the funny name and the great jump shot. Richie and I, and I think all of our friends, were backing Obama. We had stood in line for over an hour in the spring to vote for him in the Democratic caucus. Richie had even looked up the word “caucus” and told me “It turns out it has nothing to do with the word ‘circus’ after all.” But when we finally got into the caucus room at Jefferson Elementary to vote for Obama, they had run out of ballots and we had to write on blank sheets of paper, once we found out which table was ours, and it was crowded and noisy and exciting and, now that I think of it, a caucus actually is like a circus.

All that was B.S., of course. Before Sarah. Before Richie got obsessed with the woman and Tina Fey started playing her on Saturday Night Live and cracking us up. Before the interviews, and Sarah telling us how she could see Russia from her house and how Putin rears his head and comes into the air space, and Richie saying they must be looking at each other a lot, and I thought he seemed just a bit jealous when he said it.

So anyway, November 4 finally arrived, and Richie drove the mile to Sacred Hearts, where we always vote, and we parked next to the Kaimuki Longs, which is right across the street, and soon we were in the voting booths, filling in the little boxes next to the ones we liked. The ballot was pretty short and it took me about three minutes to vote. Then I fed my ballot into the machine and looked around for Richie. I spotted his slippers and skinny legs beneath the half curtain of one of the voting booths. He was shifting his weight from one leg to the other. I moved closer, and that’s when I heard the noises from his booth. “Hmmmm.” “Arggggggggg.” Then I thought I heard “Shit!”

“Hey, Richie,” I said, “are you all right in there?” The only response I got was “Double shit!” That was a new one anyway. “Richie, you okay?” I said, this time louder. No answer. Finally I looked around, ready to explain that my friend needed help, in case anyone wondered, but nobody did, so I pulled the little curtain aside and squeezed into the booth with Richie.

“This sucks, man,” Richie said.

“What sucks? Having trouble with the constitutional amendments or board of education?” We were both kind of whispering.

“No, man,” Richie said, “I’m still on the President. I’m stuck, man.”

“What do you mean? Gotta be Obama, right?”

“Well yeah, Obama, sure. Obama, absolutely. But they don’t let you vote for a different Vice President. It’s gotta be that Biden guy if I vote for Obama. It’s like they’re joined at the hip or something.”

“Biden’s okay,” I said.

“But he’s not …” Richie’s whisper trailed off. Then it hit me. I’m slow sometimes, but eventually I catch on.

“He’s not Sarah,” I said.

“Damn straight,” Richie said. “And if Sarah doesn’t win, she’ll go back to Alaska and we’ll never see her again. She’ll be out of my life. I mean our lives.”

I put a hand on Richie’s shoulder. “It’s okay, dude,” I said. Richie likes to be called “dude.” “You know, dude, you’ll see her again. She’ll be around. I bet once this thing is over she’ll be on her own and twice as …” I searched for the right adjective.

“Twice as special,” Richie said.

“Sure,” I said. “Special” was not the word I was looking for, but if it helped me talk Richie down it would do.

Just then Richie poked his head out of the booth and called to one of the workers for help. The woman patiently explained to him that no, he couldn’t split his vote, that the running mates were tied together, and Richie said “joined at the hip,” and the woman laughed and said “now you’re catching on,” and Richie thanked her and turned back to his ballot.

He let out a big sigh, and slowly filled in the little box next to Obama and Biden. Then he said, “Let’s go, I don’t want to vote for the other stuff.” He fed in his ballot, and then, as we walked to the car, I patted him on the back and reassured him that we hadn’t seen the last of Sarah Palin. Richie asked me if I thought she would keep talking and be on TV, and I told him I didn’t think anyone could stop her. And Saturday Night Live would be grateful.

“Maybe one of those reality shows,” Richie said. “Or a talk show of her own.” We climbed into his car and, before he started the engine, Richie turned to me and said, “Who do you think could stop her from talking? Maybe Hillary? Now that would be a fight. Maybe in a cage. People would pay thousands of dollars for a ticket. And we could watch it on your big screen TV. I’ll bring the beer.”

By the time we pulled into my driveway Richie’s mood had brightened considerably. He was ready to watch the election results from the mainland. Ready to cheer for Obama. Knowing now that he could have it both ways. Barack and Sarah on the big screen TV, tonight and beyond. Richie reached into his pocket for his lucky bottle opener. Life was good again.

the metaphor that ate my brain

2008-09-29T21:38:00.006-10:00

It’s a rare moment that I read my horoscope in the daily paper. I used to check it out regularly for laughs, but lately not so much. It would have been better for my peace of mind if I had not glanced at it the other day. Much better.

There it was, on page two of the Island Life section, right next to Sylvia (“The woman who somtimes lacks empathy can always dredge up a bit for France”), and Annie’s Mailbox (“Woman finds her job unfulfilling, considers Air National Guard”), and the daily drama of advice for bridge players (“‘East opened,’ Louie said plaintively; ‘why not take the heart finesse?’”), and the latest Sudoku (reminding me once again why I didn’t major in math), and the New York Times Crossword (54 down, three letters, “___ vindice” [Confederacy motto], reminding me once again why I didn’t major in Latin).

So there it was, my daily horoscope, courtesy of the Honolulu Advertiser:

GEMINI (May 21-June 20)

Sail the seas of romance, but keep an eye peeled on business from your personal crow’s nest. New relationships may seem uncertain. Hold your course and be patient until storms of controversy pass.

As soon as I read these words I knew I was in trouble. The storms in my brain built quickly. Memories of bouts of seasickness on small boats, each memory colored by the most vivid physical sensations and events, replayed in the home theatre of my mind. Throw in acrophobia—a condition I attribute to having fallen off the family couch and broken my collarbone when I was six months old, so yeah, right, I just can’t wait to climb up into that crow’s nest during a storm—and I’m in deep trouble with this horoscope.

Let’s break it down, shall we? Sail the seas of romance, but ... hold on right there! I’ve heard this siren call before. I’d be happy to take a cruise on a large luxury liner, where there are no sails, and definitely no crow’s nests. Romance and violent seasickness do not mix. But if it is a romantic cruise, and I’m getting away from all the demands of my life on land, why do I have to keep an eye peeled on business? Right now I’m trying not to think about peeled eyes. I suspect that’s another metaphor, but I’m trying to drive it from my mind.

If I do decide to follow the advice and peel an eye on business, shouldn’t I keep my feet on the ground, or at least on the deck? But no, it has to be from your personal crow’s nest. Dammit, I don’t have a personal crow, and if I did I would leave it alone in its nest. It’s at this point, I notice, that the metaphor begins to eat my brain.

The next sentence in the horoscope seems innocuous enough. New relationships may seem uncertain. No metaphors here. And yet, I still feel a gnawing at my brain, and I know why. New relationships are always uncertain. So don’t waste my time with such drivel.

With what brain I have left I try to process the final sentence of the horoscope. Hold your course and be patient until storms of controversy pass. Storms of controversy? Storms of controversy?! It’s not enough that I’ve been assigned to a crow’s nest, but now we have to have storms at sea while I’m in the damn crow’s nest? The storms are totally redundant. I can be sick just climbing to the crow’s nest, or even standing on the deck and staring up at it.

Let’s recap what we’ve learned, before my brain is totally eaten away. Seas of romance ... check. Eye peeled on business ... check. Personal crow’s nest ... check. New relationships yada yada yada ... check. Patient during storms ... check. As I begin to lose consciousness, I seem to see sailors climbing to the crow’s nest to rescue me. Will they arrive in time?

While waiting for them, I realize that the Honolulu Advertiser is still clutched in my hand, and I notice for the first time the name of the person who wrote the horoscope, the person responsible for the dire state of my brain. Holiday Mathis is her name. I reach for the computer in my personal crow’s nest (well, it’s my crow’s nest, and I insist on the computer ... and WiFi), and I google Holiday Mathis, and her photo appears, staring back at me intently, perhaps studying the degree of my seasickness and the percentage of my brain that is still intact.

Then I click on the LA Times entry for Holiday Mathis, and I read this disclaimer: “The astrological forecast should be read for entertainment.” I want to send a strongly worded reply to the LA Times, to ask them if this is their idea of entertainment. And I want to write to Holiday Mathis and tell her exactly what she can do with her seas of romance and crow’s nests and storms of controversy. But I have no energy left, and the sailors have finally reached me in my personal crow’s nest. “It’s Holiday,” I say weakly, “she made me do it.” But they don’t understand. They whisper to each other about my brain. I close my eyes and wait for the storms of controversy to pass.

picture the ending

2008-09-25T20:06:00.014-10:00

Writers spend a lot of time on their opening paragraphs, and rightly so. Then we stand on the corner, displaying our wares under a streetlamp, waiting for a reader (or agent, or editor) to drive by. When they slow down, or stop at a red light, we boldly slink out to the curb, holding the first manuscript page of our novel up to the car window, pointing to that first seductive sentence, the alluring opening paragraph, the irresistible hook that will charm them into opening the passenger door and inviting us in. Hooker and hookee, together at last in a kind of erotic literary eHarmony dream.

But—and I apologize if you wanted me to pursue this dream further—what about the final paragraph of the novel? How about that moment on page 324 when you’re exhausted from months of writing, and the plot’s resolved, and the characters have done about all the damage you can handle, and it’s time to end the damn thing? Do you have the creative energy and vision left to write a strong ending? After all the blood, sweat, and tears, maybe you owe it to yourself, and to your story, to write a great ending.

Let’s look at a few famous endings in fiction and see what we can learn. You’ll have your own favorite endings, the ones that have influenced your own writing, whether consciously or not, but these are some of mine.

At the end of Gone With the Wind, after a thousand pages of life with Scarlett and Rhett and friends, after all the triumphs and defeats, all the living and suffering and dying, what image does Margaret Mitchell leave us with? It’s Scarlett O’Hara alone, because Rhett Butler has just walked away from her life again, rejecting her at the end of a long dialogue scene in which the two revisit their past and current feelings. After Rhett disappears up the stairs, and out of her life again, Scarlett is left alone, and in these final moments of chapter 63, and the novel, we are inside the heroine’s mind. Here are the last two paragraphs.

With the spirit of her people who would not know defeat, even when it stared them in the face, she raised her chin. She could get Rhett back. She knew she could. There had never been a man she couldn't get, once she set her mind upon him.

"I'll think of it all tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day."

Romantic enough for you? Hopeful enough? Well, that’s our Scarlett. She’s going home, the place that, as Dorothy Gale reminds us in The Wizard of Oz, there’s no place like. Not a bad ending. Not a bad first novel for Margaret Mitchell. Sold a few copies. We’re left with the image of a strong heroine, going home to Tara for comfort and strength, to rise again, to win back her man.

Picture that ending. It has a sharp image, tightly focused on the central character, and it evokes strong emotions, for Scarlett, for Margaret Mitchell (imagine her writing that ending), and for the reader. The emotional ending is not gratuitous. Scarlett, and her creator, and the reader have gone through an amazing long journey to reach that ending; they deserve it.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, at the end of The Great Gatsby, leaves us with the narrator, outsider Nick Carraway, about to go home again, to return to his roots in the Midwest. But first Nick revisits another home, Gatsby’s Long Island mansion. The house is quiet now. Its wild parties have receded into the past, along with its owner. In the final paragraphs Nick imagines the “old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world.” Then, in the novel’s closing paragraphs, he imagines his friend Gatsby’s own discovery:

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

A great lyrical ending, with a strong image tightly focused on the central character, and evoking strong emotions in the novel’s final moments.

E. B. White’s classic Charlotte’s Web, which opens with Fern saving the runt pig Wilbur from the ax, ends with a hymn to friendship. Wilbur tells Charlotte’s children about their mother, and White writes simply and beautifully of the passing of the seasons, and generations, on the farm. Wilbur’s farm. Home. This last image, of Wilbur happy and surrounded by friends, and remembering Charlotte, brings the book to a perfect end. The final paragraph is a lesson for writers in the elements of style, in the power of a few words:

Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.

What about endings for short stories? I believe the same principles apply as for novels. Two of my favorite short stories are from Dubliners. Both end with what James Joyce called an epiphany, a moment of revelation and insight, “a sudden spiritual manifestation.” In Joyce’s “Araby,” the young narrator with a deep crush on Mangan’s sister makes a difficult journey to buy a promised gift for her at the Araby bazaar. The boy fails in his romantic quest, however, arriving as the bazaar is closing and without enough money for something nice. At the end of the story we see him in the darkness of the closing bazaar, as Joyce delivers the epiphany in one concluding sentence: “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.” Again, a sharp image of the central character, evoking strong emotion.

In “The Dead,” Joyce is at his best, writing a longer story with a deeper epiphany. It begins simply with Gabriel Conroy, the central character, attending a Christmas party thrown by his aunts, and ends dramatically with a scene between Gabriel and his wife, Gretta. After the party they ride out a snowstorm in a hotel room, where Gretta tells Gabriel that the song that moved her at the party was the song that a young man she once loved greatly used to sing, a man who died for love of her. Gretta lies crying on the bed, and finally falls asleep while Gabriel gazes out at the snow and experiences his spiritual moment of insight.

Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

So there we have it. Five endings, all with powerful images and emotions and focused on the central characters who have been at the heart of the story. Notice that these are examples of denouement—that often quiet, reflective period following the climax of the plot. The story has reached afterglow, the golden hour, the last light of day between sunset and evening.

When I’m writing a short story or novel, and have resolved the conflict, I find myself naturally writing by that last light of day, adding a short scene or paragraph that inevitably is influenced and inspired by dozens of favorite endings. As the cowboy rides off into the sunset, his battles won, what is he thinking? Perhaps he stops and looks back at the town and gives a final wave. Or maybe, just maybe, he turns and rides back into town and, without stopping, sweeps the blonde saloon girl off her feet, just when she feared she would never see him again. Now there’s an image I like.

it's where you finish

2008-09-09T20:47:00.005-10:00

“It’s an amazing story. They talk about it all the time. The players keep saying, ‘It’s not where you start, but where you finish.' "
... Brandi Chastain, Beijing 2008

Immediately after the emotional ending of the Olympic women’s soccer gold medal match in Beijing, as the cameras showed the faces of the American players, TV commentator Brandi Chastain gave us one of the many lessons that we can take away from an exhilarating two hours of sport and human drama.

The USA women had just stuck together as a team to edge out favored Brazil for the gold, 1-0. Carli Lloyd’s shot in overtime had eluded the Brazilian goalkeeper’s fingers by inches. Then, in the closing minutes, the Americans had withstood furious attacks on their goal.

After the final whistle Hope Solo (the best name for a goalie ever) walked triumphantly across the field. Solo’s own story is, in itself, one of redemption and validation. In the World Cup last year, although she had performed admirably, Solo was benched by the American coach (soon to be replaced himself) in an unpopular move before a loss to Brazil that knocked her team out of the Cup.

Now, a year later, as we watched Hope Solo and the rest of the victorious American women, Chastain spoke of the team’s mantra, “It’s not where you start, but where you finish.”

In Beijing the American women did not start well. Missing their injured star and top player, Abby Wambach, they opened against Norway and promptly surrendered two goals in the first four minutes. They lost that first game 2-0, but during the following two weeks they dug in and advanced to the gold medal game, where in spite of the incredible skills and flare of the Brazilian players, in spite of a crowd that largely cheered on the favored Brazil, they proved that soccer is a team sport. All the lessons you’ve ever been taught about teamwork and sticking together in tough times were there on that Olympic soccer field.

Then we were treated to the medal ceremony, and for once the network showed the full ceremony, with all the flowers and music and smiles and tears and medals. Were there ever medals. Bronze medals for the young German team, which seemed quite proud of its achievement. Silver medals for the talented Brazilians, the crushing weight of another bitter defeat showing in their faces.

And finally gold medals for the Americans, who had earned their medals and celebration with 120 minutes of gritty team effort against all odds, rewarded for all their hard work in the months and years leading up to the Olympics, and rewarded for their belief in themselves. They had finished incredibly well, on top of the soccer world.

There’s a lesson in there for all of us, in our lives and in our careers. If you’re a writer you might want to put the American team’s mantra on your desk, where you can see it every day: “It’s not where you start, but where you finish.”

So many difficult beginnings in a writer’s life. So many obstacles to overcome. A new story that does not start well. Struggling through a muddled middle, searching for that happy ending. Then a first draft completed, but needing so much revision. Writing is rewriting. You do your best. Then somehow you do better. And after all that there may be no gold medal waiting for you. Where’s the reward?

Take a day away from the keyboard, away from the writing. Take a long walk and think about why you write, why you began writing and continue. Then return and write again. Write from the heart. Tell your story. It’s where you finish that matters.

Then take that mantra and apply it to your characters. If they don’t start well, if the odds are against them, so much the better. We love to root for the underdog. Let them dig down and find their way. Let them find redemption and finish well.

Remember Hope Solo’s story. Remember the American women in Beijing, members of a team that worked together and celebrated together, young athletes who deserved each petal on the roses they held at the end, and each medal they wore proudly around their necks.

debbie in wonderland: playing the name game

2008-08-26T06:11:00.009-10:00

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

2008-08-16T12:57:00.019-10:00

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,

They danced by the light of the moon.

what do you write with?

2008-08-11T20:27:00.004-10:00

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

2008-08-03T21:50:00.003-10:00

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

2008-08-01T06:25:00.005-10:00

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.

real guys don't cry

2008-07-26T19:32:00.012-10:00

Larry McMurtry, in the preface to an early novel, writes this: "The knottiest aesthetic problem I fumbled with in Moving On is whether its heroine, Patsy Carpenter, cries too much." Do your characters cry? In public or private? Frequently? Never? If they don’t cry, what would make them cry? Know your characters! Let me tell you about Richie.

It’s Saturday and my friend Richie from up the street has dropped in to watch the game with me. As usual he’s brought a small cooler with bottles of Bud for him and Corona for me. I slide a frozen pepperoni pizza into the oven and cut up a lime for the Coronas.

Richie claims the recliner while I’m in the kitchen, so I settle in on the sofa. Richie tosses me a Corona and says "Think fast." I fumble but finally catch the bottle with two hands. Richie gives the out sign, like an umpire. "Almost an error there, Dave," he says. Then he pitches the bottle opener to me, the one he’s had since college, the much-travelled one with the well endowed metallic babe for a handle. I open the Corona and squeeze a lime wedge into the neck while Richie snickers and takes a big gulp from his Bud. He always snickers, but it’s never stopped me from adding the lime.

It’s my place so I control the remote. The game’s not on yet and I’m flipping fast and then there are cowboys on the screen so Richie says "whoa" and these two cowboys ride toward each other, and they hug and kiss, except that one is a cowgirl so it’s not Brokeback Mountain and Richie can relax. Then we hear a woman’s emotional voiceover saying, "The moment his lips touched mine I knew that we would never again be apart."

Richie calls out "Chick flick! Change it!" but I don’t, not yet. Then we see Kathleen Turner typing and crying, and she’s saying, "I knew then that we would spend the rest of our life together forever. Forever." And Kathleen Turner’s crying her eyes out and Richie’s groaning and covering his eyes and pleading "No more, no more, no more," and Turner says, through the tears, "Oh God, that’s good," and she types "THE END" and Richie is reaching over to grab the remote away from me but I stick it down my jeans and I know he’s not going in there.

Richie retreats to the recliner, folds his arms, and stares at me as if I’ve lost my mind. "Chick flick, man," he says, "chick flick," I tell him not really, that there’s lots of action and bad guys and jungle scenes, just wait for it. He asks me what’s the name of the movie and I tell him Romancing the Stone, and he says that proves it, right there in the first word. If it were Throwing the Stone, or Playing Football With the Stone, or Die Hard With the Stone, I think he’d give it a chance.

"Oh my God," Richie says, "she’s celebrating with her cat now!" It’s true, Kathleen Turner is opening a can of tuna for the cat and lighting candles to celebrate finishing the novel. "Make her stop crying," Richie says. "Please. Or just change the channel. Let’s watch Sportscenter."

"Is it the crying?" I say. "You don’t like watching women cry?"

"Well jeez, it’s never good when they cry. You know that. It means we’re going to end up losing."

"Okay," I say, "but what if the woman’s crying with joy because you’ve just given her incredible physical pleasure?"

Richie stops and thinks. He’s replaying the greatest hits from his love life. "Nope," he finally says, "never happened to me."

"Me neither." We’re so honest with each other. "Say, Richie, have you ever cried?"

"Nah, real guys don’t cry. Except maybe that one time I was a kid and I broke my arm and it hurt like hell. Have you?"

"A few times, I guess. My high school sweetheart ran off with a sailor. I told you about that one."

"Yeah," Richie says, "that’s why you always root for Army to crush Navy. Come on now, enough’s enough. Turn on ESPN."

I punch in the numbers and Kathleen Turner disappears and the Sportscenter guys come on. They’re dressed up in suits and ties, but I wish they’d just wear regular guy clothes like Richie and me and not sit behind a desk.

"You know what I hate?" Richie says. It’s a long list, the things Richie hates, longer than my list, although there are things that are on both our lists. "I hate it when some great ballplayer hangs ‘em up and rides into the sunset, but first he has to have the stupid press conference to announce his retirement and he starts bawling like a baby. Real guys don’t cry."

"I hate that too," I chime in. "Tom Hanks was right. There’s no crying in baseball."

"Yeah," Richie says, "if it was me, I’d just open a cold Bud and wave goodbye and say it’s been fun but I’m outta here and I’ll see you in Cooperstown." Richie in the Hall of Fame? That’s what you call your hypothetical right there.

Just then the front door opens and it’s my wife, Nikki, back from her workout at the gym. Richie grabs a Bud out of the cooler and shakes it up real good, then tosses it to her, along with the bottle opener, and says "Think fast," and she catches the bottle with one hand and the opener with the other. She played a mean shortstop in college. Then Nikki stands over Richie, who is fully reclined and fully vulnerable, and holds the Bud bottle kind of horizontal and tells him "Think fast" and opens it and watches it spurt onto Richie’s Bud belly, soaking his shirt, and Richie doesn’t get upset, he just laughs like it’s the funniest thing that ever happened and he looks at me as if to tell me, once again, that I married the coolest woman in the world.

Richie told me once that it’s great she works out "like us." I’m not sure what he was referring to by "like us," unless he meant the times we take a football out to the back yard and try to throw it and catch it without spilling our beers. Or maybe the whiffleball games in the back yard, which works out better because it’s easier to catch without spilling the suds, and you can swing a whiffle bat with one hand no problem.

Nikki plops down next to me on the couch and says, "Hey Dave, look, there’s your hero on Sportscenter, Peyton Manning."

"Best quarterback in the world," I say, and Richie starts in on his same old "Joe Montana, in his prime, best quarterback in the universe," and we turn to Nikki to settle the argument, and I know she’s always saying that Tom Brady is way cuter than Peyton, but she’s also loyal to me, so I wait for her to jump on the Peyton train, but instead she rolls her eyes and says, "You guys are pathetic. Best quarterback ever? No contest. It’s John Elway."

Then suddenly Nikki says, "Hush, it’s My Wish on Sportscenter." She grabs the remote so we can’t change it. My Wish is a long feature where they find this sick kid and tell their sad story and then they let them meet their sports hero and everybody feels warm and fuzzy. Don’t get me wrong, ESPN does it well, and you can’t say anything bad about being nice to sick kids, but Richie and I would rather be watching a game.

This week the My Wish folks at ESPN are telling the story of Dani, a 10-year-old girl who almost died from a brain tumor and now is having a little trouble walking. They show Dani watching a Michelle Kwan skating video at home when the phone rings and it’s Michelle and she talks with Dani, and Dani’s face, which was so damn cute already, just lights up. Then Dani and her family ride in a limo to meet Michelle at the rink, and Michelle hugs her and gives her the actual jacket that she wore in the 2002 Winter Olympics. Then she takes Dani on the ice for a skating lesson, and it’s the sweetest thing you ever saw.

I hear these muffled sounds and look over at Richie, who has a daughter the same age as Dani, and Richie is rubbing his eyes and trying to hide the fact that he’s shedding big tears. I nudge Nikki, who’s wiping away some tears of her own, and we both stare at Richie, who doesn’t dare look at us.

On the screen Michelle Kwan makes hot chocolate for Dani and gives her a big candy bar and talks to her softly, and then I can’t hold it any longer. Nikki smiles at me and touches the tears on my cheek. Then Richie surrenders and starts bawling. Nikki goes over and puts a hand on his shoulder to comfort him. "It’s okay," Nikki tells him. "Sometimes real guys cry too."

Richie jumps up and stumbles into the kitchen. "I’ll check on the pizza," he says. When he comes back his eyes are red and he has slices for all of us. Between the beer Nikki poured on him and the flood of tears he’s been unable to dam up, he’s a wet and sorry sight. I’ll take him for a friend though, even if he doesn’t appreciate Peyton.

cavemen, first drafts, and the quest for fire

2008-07-20T20:44:00.003-10:00

The other day, while watching that insurance commercial where the sophisticated caveman, upset by Geico’s slogan (“So easy a caveman can do it”), reminds modern man that he was the one who walked upright, discovered fire, and invented the wheel, I wanted the caveman to add storytelling to his list of great achievements, and was about to yell my request at the TV screen, but instead I began thinking about the caveman sitting around the fire at night with his comrades, telling the story of the day’s great hunt, and how that telling must have been like a writer’s first draft and would probably be improved upon, embellished no doubt, in later tellings around other fires. In my own caveman fantasies, of course, I am the one who invents the run-on sentence.

We all assume that the second draft will be better than the first, the third draft better than the second, and so on. Anne Lamott, in Bird by Bird, observed that even the best writers produce “shitty” first drafts, thus encouraging all those who are careful to stay upwind of their first draft to jump into a second draft, filled with courage and hope. Writing is rewriting, we are told. Who can argue with that? Ernest Hemingway said that he rewrote the ending to A Farewell to Arms 39 times because he wanted to get the words right. From shitty to sublime in 39 steps.

But what of our caveman friend? If we ride our time machine back to that Paleolithic night, which version of the hunt do we want to hear? If I’m driving the time machine, we’re going back to the first telling, on the same day as the great hunt.

I want to sit at that fire and hear our ancient friend, still hot from the adventure, tell us what happened—beginning, middle, and end—even if his words are at times confused or redundant, his prose overrun a bit by adjectives and adverbs, his ending not revised 39 times.

I’ll accept those imperfections in order to hear the excitement in the caveman’s voice as he tells the story of the new adventure, and to see the fire reflected in his eyes, eyes that have so recently seen great danger and great success. Months, years later, after our friend has retold his story many times, we can revisit him and see how he has refined the telling, tightening the plot and smoothing the prose, embellishing the details of the hunt, employing dramatic pauses to thrill his listeners, wowing them with the 39th version of the ending. Will he still have the energy, the honesty, the truth of that first telling? Maybe. Maybe not.

We ride our time machine back to the present. We pick up a first draft and reread it, then the revisions. Has the rewriting weakened the energy, the honesty, the truth of the first draft? Whatever the answer, it’s a question we need to ask. The first draft may be imperfect, is in fact guaranteed to be imperfect, but the excitement of telling a new story is usually there. We just need to bring that spark with us as we rewrite the story.

Oh yes, the spark. The spark that awaits our discovery and fires our imagination. We could call the writer’s journey The Quest for Fire. Crank up the time machine one more time. This time we journey farther back, to a place where cavemen sit huddled together for warmth and protection on a black night, possessing no fire against the chill, missing one of their own. They hear footsteps in the distance, then closer. In fear they grip their weapons more tightly.

Then they see him. Their missing comrade has returned. They see his face illuminated by the large fiery stick he carries in his right hand. He has captured fire and brought it home. Tonight there will be a great campfire to sit around and an amazing story to hear. First draft. So easy a caveman can do it.

goldilocks 101: how do you know when it's just right?

2008-07-18T00:08:00.003-10:00

This is not about the legal and moral issues attached to blondes who break and enter. Nor is it even about blondes in general. This is not the time and place to talk about one particular blonde who proposed to me in the frozen food section of a supermarket in Seattle (I said no, of course; a guy wants a little more romance at times like that).

What this is about, in fact, is one particular blonde’s unfailing instinct for rejecting inferior choices and pouncing on just the right option. It’s what made her famous, that and the fact that she walked uninvited into the home of three bears who didn’t know her from Madonna. Like Madonna, of course, she is known by one name.

Ask any child and you’ll hear the kid’s account of Goldilocks. Ask astronomers and they’ll tell you about the “Goldilocks zone,” where the temperature of a distant planet is just right for water to be liquid at its surface and thus able to support life as we know it. Ask me and I’ll tell you about what writers can learn from this famous blonde.

Writers always seem to be struggling to find their own Goldilocks zone, to know when their work is just right. Goldilocks knew, she knew, which bowl of porridge was too hot, which was too cold, and which was just right. The story doesn’t tell us how she knew, but I think it was not something she had to analyze before she chose the baby bear’s bowl of porridge and ate it all up. Her taste buds told her. She knew what she liked. Going in, she had some experience with porridge.

Then the business with the chairs. The daddy chair? Too hard. The mama chair? Too soft. It was only after sampling these two that Goldilocks chose the baby chair and declared it to be “just right.” Same sequence as with the porridge. She had to taste from all three bowls and sit on all three chairs before knowing how to proceed. Unfortunately, Goldilocks must have spent half her life in the buffet line, because the baby bear’s chair broke beneath her.

Undeterred, our daring heroine went upstairs to see what other damage she could inflict. As we well remember, Goldilocks had to try out all three beds before deciding that the baby bear’s bed was just right. It was so right that she soon fell asleep and was there when the three bears returned from their picnic and found the blonde invader sacked out. Much shouting and merriment ensued, leading to a frightening lesson for children who can’t resist porridge in strange homes. We are told that blondes no longer wander into bear homes in the Black Forest, although they do find other ways to wreak havoc. They have been spotted (blondes, not bears) as far away as supermarkets in Seattle.

All right, so Goldilocks was not a great burglar, but she does point the way for writers who want to know when it’s just right. How long should my story be? You can read Aristotle’s thoughts on this in his Poetics. I was taught in college that a work should have magnitude, “that quality of a work of art whereby it has as many parts as is consistent with a single view of parts and whole.” How many parts? How many pages? Not too many, and not too few, but just right.

One way to discover how long is “just right” is to write too few pages, then write too many. The right length lies somewhere in between. To test the value of a part, take it out. If Shakespeare removes the character Ophelia from Hamlet, is the tragedy diminished? If he gives Ophelia a part twice as large, is the tragedy improved? Shakespeare knew the answers to these questions.

We know as well the answers for our own stories. That knowledge arrives, however, only after we fiddle with the parts: adding, removing, shuffling, and finally arriving at the right length. It is difficult to question the length of the Goldilocks story. Bears leaving the house for a picnic (no need for their back story); cheeky little blonde walking in and helping herself to the food and furniture (we don’t require her criminal history, just get on with the story); the bears returning home and discovering the naughty blonde. Beginning, middle, and end.

Three bears? Perfect. Does baby bear need a big brother or sister? Maybe in real life, but not in our story. Two bowls of porridge? Something missing there. Four chairs? Too many by one. And is the bed part not perfectly placed for a dramatic climax? You bet.

Recently I was reminded of the reality of the late arriving answer. We ask questions of our stories, lumber through a first draft, shake our heads and begin a second draft, and so on until at last we find the answers and our story is just right, or as right as we can make it. Consider the case of Daniel Quinn. In 1992 Quinn published Ishmael, a remarkable little novel in which the title character, a half ton silverback gorilla, teaches the narrator about ecology, life, freedom, and the human condition.

Quinn’s first version of the award-winning novel was written 15 years earlier, in 1977, and was followed by seven more complete and distinct versions as the writer struggled with the book. The eighth, and final, version was the late arriving answer to Quinn’s question. In this published version the gorilla character, Ishmael, appears for the first time. Quinn also made another major change in this final version: he decided to write the book as a novel. And so it was, in another inspirational story for writers, that publication came as Quinn was about to admit defeat.

Perhaps there were other, long lost versions of the Goldilocks story. Goldilocks and the Three Frogs? Redlocks and the Seven Bears? Goldilocks, the Three Pigs, and the Building Inspector? We accept the classics as chiseled in stone, but we should remember the early uncertain steps in the creative process.

The faces of the four Presidents at Mount Rushmore we take for granted today, but in the early plans the faces would have been those of Lewis and Clark, or Washington alone. Four’s a good number on Rushmore. It’s just right. Consider too that the sculpture is unfinished. Borglum’s original design called for a sculpture of the Presidents to their waists, but time and money only provided for their heads. Give me just the heads every time. At Rushmore less is more. This is a lesson for writers to keep in mind. If we write four drafts of a novel, maybe that third draft is the answer.

Woody Allen wrote a comic story about the invention of the sandwich by the Earl of Sandwich, in which the earl does extensive research into cold cuts and cheeses, but fails miserably again and again with his early experiments. Then, one glorious day, the earl decides to put the meat inside two slices of bread, thus making deli history.

For some reason (and we might as well just accept it, as we accept gravity), you can’t invent the sandwich on day one. You can’t write Ishmael in one draft. And that notorious blonde with burglary in her heart? I like to believe she started out to visit her grandmother. She missed the wolf, but she did find other instructive wildlife to keep us all entertained for lo these many years.

heartbreak number 437

2008-07-16T16:57:00.003-10:00

[While folks on the Mainland daydream about romantic Hawaii, I sometimes daydream about how people live on the Mainland. I mostly see them on cable TV. You know, people like Ross and Rachel. The following short short story is from The Breakup Queen, a collection of 18 contemporary Hawaii writers.]

"Heartbreak Number 437"

Ross has entered the Twilight Zone. He stares at the television screen, not believing what he is seeing and hearing. His mind and body still heavy with sleep, he is a bear just emerging from a long hibernation. His surroundings are familiar, the same apartment and furniture, the same large window, but something is missing. It’s quiet, too quiet. Where are the voices? All those voices, the voices of friends, the voices of what has now become his past, reduced to the faintest of echoes. What the hell has happened to his world?

He moves closer to the TV, studying the young woman, her familiar voice the only one remaining from the old gang. She is beautiful and sad, and all the more beautiful for her sadness. Why does the woman interviewing her keep calling her Jennifer? Her real name is Rachel. His Rachel.

“Hey, hey,” Ross says, recovering his power of speech, fairly eloquent for a bear just out of hibernation. “Hey, hey, hey.” More eloquent yet. “Hey, Rachel, it’s me,” his small bear voice pleads. He kneels in front of the TV, his face only a foot from her image, but Rachel ignores him, pretending to be Jennifer, talking about what has made her so sad.

It’s all about someone named Brad. Ross tries to follow what the two women are saying about Brad. It makes no sense. Ross believes, for a moment, that Rachel must have a twin sister named Jennifer, that it is Jennifer who has gotten mixed up with this Brad character and Brad has broken her heart. Poor Jennifer. When Rachel walks in the door, Ross will ask her why she never told him she had a twin sister, and ask if there is anything they can do to make her feel better.

Just then Jennifer looks into the camera and she and Ross are eye-to-eye. In that instant the twin sister theory evaporates and Ross is looking at Rachel. She is saying how lonely she has been. Now Ross is just as lonely as she is, which he finds strangely comforting.

Rachel begins talking about what Brad did with another woman. She says that Brad is missing a sensitivity chip. Sensitivity chip? Ross brightens. “Hey, Rachel,” he says. “It’s me, Ross.” He jumps to his feet, his arms spread now, the bear man ready for action. “You know I have a sensitivity chip,” he says. “Remember?” He has stopped listening to the interview on the screen. “Remember how sensitive I am? If I were any more sensitive I’d be gay!”

Ross walks briskly to the window. The sky has lightened. He feels the warm sun on his face. Another spring has arrived. Rachel will be home soon. She will remember him and forget all about Brad. Maybe the voices will return as well. The old friends. Ross waits by the window.

falling in love with first person

2008-07-15T20:59:00.004-10:00

I’m trying to remember the first time I wrote in first person point of view. There’s a flickering memory of an assignment in fourth grade, writing about an imaginary trip across Texas. I remember heading west from Houston, in a car driven apparently by someone else, someone with a driver’s license. Our teacher—whose name was Bird or Boyd, both taught at Alamo Elementary, much to our delight—loved the “nice details” of the rolling countryside around Austin. Unfortunately, I had never been west of Austin, so the narrative, and the nice details, flattened out after that. I believe I was on my way to the golden land of California, only God knows why, perhaps to see the Golden Gate Bridge, or John Wayne in Hollywood, or any of the many movie cowboys whose larger-than-life images and heroic deeds filled my childhood. What I needed was to write a story about the cowboys, but that would have to wait several decades.

When I finally arrived in California after college, it was filled not with cowboys but with hippies. San Francisco is not noted for its buckaroos, even if it does have a Cow Palace. I did finally see the famous bridge, and discovered the wineries north of the city, and their tasting rooms. By then I had left the old movie cowboys, and my childhood, back in Texas. My writing had become a long series of academic exercises, mostly literary analysis and detailed critical journeys over the rolling countryside of modern American literature. At the University of Delaware, before I moved west, I had seen not a single cowboy, unless you count watching Jon Voight up on the big screen with Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy.

When I migrated up the coast to Seattle—trading in the bridge for Puget Sound ferries, and the wineries for Pike Place Market—I landed in a fiction writing class and tried my hand at a short story. No cowboys inhabited that narrative, only a young guy working in a Seattle ice cream shop. This story had an amazingly large number of nice details (perhaps I was remembering my glory days as an acclaimed writer in fourth grade). It also had a first-person narrator. I could hear his voice. Unlike the fourth-grade story, however, this ice-cream story went nowhere—not to California, not to Austin, not even down the street to Pike Place Market (now that would have been a great setting). After a few highly detailed pages, the story fizzled out for lack of plot. My narrator had no goal, no great passion (I realize now), not even a passion for ice cream. I did enjoy the first-person storytelling, and I would return to it when I moved on to Hawaii and began writing about cowboys.

Up to this point I had just been flirting with first-person point of view. She was an intriguing woman I had seen all my life. She was always in the company of someone else, other writers. With other writers, some of them famous and brilliant, she was always changing, dressed differently for each writer, her voice never the same from story to story, her moods voltaile. Should I ask her out? If I did, and she said yes, would it result in disaster? Would there be a second chance?

For a long time I just watched her, while I stayed with third-person point of view, my longtime companion, with whom I felt safe and comfortable. It’s not as if I couldn’t tell a story with good old third-person. With third-person I could still climb inside a character’s head and tell a story from his point of view. Or her point of view. I wrote an entire novel, Escape from the Dream House, inside the head of Barbie! Who knew that Barbie could have such an exciting life in the real world once she ditched Ken?

And yet I would continue catching glimpses of the mysterious first-person lady, who always seemed so exotic, her life impulsive and fascinating. One morning I set out to write a short story about the ritual of picking mangoes, an autobiographical tale told from the point of view of a man who has married into a local Japanese-American family and been invited to help harvest mangoes from the great tree in front of the family home in Kaimuki. To tell this highly personal story, one that was at the very heart of my life in Hawaii, I had two options. I could distance myself a bit with third-person point of view. Or I could dive headlong into the personal emotions of the story and make it more intimate by letting the reader hear the voice of the central character.

I don’t recall now whether I walked up to first-person and asked her out for this mango story, or whether she walked up behind me and whispered in my ear (I kind of like the version in which she whispers her invitation and I go with her). I do know, however, that we hit it off great, from the beginning. The timing was right. The story was right. I was ready for first-person, and she was ready for me. At one point she looked at me and whispered, “What took you so long?” The story, which I called “Mango Lessons,” opens with setting:

“Grampa, come down!”

The small boy’s words were soon echoed by others who stood under the large old mango tree, enjoying its shade on a hot June day in Kaimuki, not far from Waikiki and Diamond Head, and even closer to Leonard’s Bakery, which produced the sweet malasada the small boy held in one hand.

In the fifth paragraph the narrator identifies himself, and his role in the story, and we’re off and running with first-person:

And there I was, standing in the driveway, holding the long, heavy pole with the hook and basket on the end, the magic instrument entrusted to me, the newcomer, the haole man who had married the younger daughter. The tall haole man. The “tall man,” as the small boy first called me. The Japanese-American family, presided over by its mango-climbing patriarch, had admitted a white man into its ranks, a remarkable precedent.

Until this day—the day of the mango picking—I had been under the illusion that my acceptance depended on my keeping a smile on the younger daughter’s face, and I had done all in my power to produce and sustain that smile. But the illusion was quickly vanishing, as surely as the malasada that the small boy was devouring under the mango tree. Now I knew why I had been accepted. I must have appeared on the scene like the answer to the parents’ prayer. “Please send us a six-foot man who can reach the tall mangoes.” They had neglected to ask for a six-foot Japanese man, and now they were stuck with me.

And so it began, my affair with the exotic woman who often walked up behind me and whispered in my ear. The more stories I wrote in first-person point of view—whether they were about Texas cowboys, or Reno rodeo queens, or folks in Hawaii—the more natural it felt. Sometimes I would seek her out. Sometimes we would just set out together, no invitation needed. She became a familiar companion, but never dull, never predictable. Her moods were wild as ever, her voice as unpredictable as life itself.