Scraps from the literary table
Since February, I've been sending out stories to literary magazines. I've sent out 50 submissions so far from my collection of linked stories, and although I haven't had any acceptances (except one last summer that they STILL haven't published), I think things are looking up. In the last month three journals have sent back stories with nice notes.
Hey, in this profession, I take what pleasure I can get out of the submissions process.
Oops
A friend invited me to join HI5, and as I was signing up, I mistakenly invited everyone in my address book.
Sorry, peeps!
Flagellation to follow.
My darling husband
What Todd has done for me lately:
Joined Wildlands Restoration Volunteers as a cook so that we can be together while I'm digging dirt for them
Cleaned the the bathroom
Learned to scuba dive
All the money and electronics stuff around the house
Birthday celebration
No more bulgy backs
Ever heard of
Sassybax?
Supposedly, their products eliminate back bulges under tight shirts. I ordered one and will report in due time.
In addition to searching for the perfect bra (I usually shop at Christina's in Boulder, but have yet to justify a La Perla bra to myself, because I must have matching panties, and just one bra and one pair of panties is about $200), I also search for perfect items made from recycled materials.
I think purses made from recycled car tires are a great idea.
Vulcana
Please, sir, may I have some more?*
I’m having my third piece of “decadent chocolate mousse cake” of the day.
No, I’m not PMSing. Actually, my period is about finished.
But today is the day after my 43rd birthday, and I decided to have a piece of my birthday cake with every meal. I’m having number three now. I also had a couple pieces of a chocolate bar today.
Chocolate is virtually my only remaining addiction. I quit smoking; I seldom drink caffeine, and I have never been addicted to drugs. I’ve done a few—mushrooms once, pot and hash now and then from my teens until 1995, and cocaine a few times in the 1980s—but nicotine was my only serious addiction.
I would so like to be one of those people who can occasionally smoke, but I’m not. It’s too stimulating for me. I’ve kicked it twice, and I intend never to get hooked again. So I have to hold myself from it.
For several years in my twenties I dated an alcoholic (the guy could drink a fifth of Scotch a night, OK, and then he would get aggressive and maudlin all at once—but only when he drank Scotch. The memory of trying to converse with him in one of these moods makes me want to puke), and being in his life made me wonder why I was immune. I finally decided that my personality is so laid-back, or retiring, or reserved, or however you want to label me, that the only thing I could get addicted to is a stimulant like nicotine, or possibly like cocaine, though I never liked it that much. I just did it because it was there.
“I just did it because it was there” is a slogan I could also apply to men in my life. For much of my life, especially high school, I dated guys who liked me. I had a terrific crush on an upperclassman, and nobody else could compete, but he had a petite, blonde, popular girlfriend, and I had no idea that he secretly liked me. So if someone showed interest in me, I went with it. It’s an odd thing—flattering and empty all at once. I didn’t know what it was like to date someone I really wanted until this guy broke up with his girlfriend and showed interest in me. I still remember the first time he kissed me. We were in the basement of his house, and he was lying halfway on top of me. I was having an out of body experience, thinking, “I can’t believe this is happening.” It was the first real romantic thrill of my life, especially when he said he’d always wanted to kiss me. (All that happened after I dated his baby brother. Why did I date him? Because he liked me. A lot. When we broke up, I actually said to him, “You like me too much.” And then a few months later, there I was kissing his brother in the basement. His parents must have thought I was such a slut.)
We broke up my sophomore year of college, and he married a girl from my high school sex ed class who didn’t know what a blow job was. I had to explain it to her. I hope he appreciates my help.
The basement kisser wasn’t one of my addictions. The Scotch drinker was. Certain men just draw me in. Usually they’re intellectual to a fault and don’t mind rubbing your face in it a little. They’re clever talkers and can argue me into a corner. They have tons of friends but have problems with truly loving and supporting someone. I desperately want them to find me interesting, and once they do, I begin to realize just how much they fail to satisfy. So what do I do? Well, it’s an addiction—by definition, I want some more.
*Oliver Twist
Lord of the Rings Synergy
On our trip last weekend, Todd and I visited the Women’s Rights National Historic Park in Seneca Falls, where in 1848 American women first called for the right to vote.
Two of the signers of the Declaration of Sentiments (modeled on the Declaration of Independence) were Martha Underhill and Edward Underhill.
When Frodo traveled to Bree, he went as Mr. Underhill.
Not only does Frodo live, but once he was reincarnated as a suffragist.
Oh and BTW, the United States was NOT the first country to give women the vote. I think it was New Zealand. Those kiwis! Anyway, several European countries granted women the vote before 1920, when we got around to it.
They fought for 72 years for that right. Never forget that.
Trips and traps
Twice this summer I’ve traveled—and twice the landscape has called to me so strongly I wanted to stay and explore it. The first time was in California in June, when we drove up and down the state from Glendale to San Luis Obispo to San Diego and back. After living in Colorado for 18 years, I’m a sucker for vegetation, and California was thick with it.
The second time was last weekend, when Todd and I attended a wedding in the Finger Lakes region of New York, between Rochester and Syracuse. It was as if I’d been transported home to the Midwest, except the lakes were much larger and longer and deeper. Hmm, larger and longer and deeper…
Excuse me.
Did I mention we went to a wildlife refuge?
Some other highlights of the trip:
the handfasting ceremony
Chelsea playing volleyball and working on a car in her wedding dress
the spiders building webs on top of webs in the railing outside our room at Taughannock Farms Inn (I recommend it, the inn, that is)
Swimming out to the dock in Cayuga Lake (it’s been a long time since I swam in a lake, and it was difficult to swim into the waves)
Walking into the woods to bird early one morning and enjoying the eerie stillness—until the disco music and announcements from the triathlon started.
When we drove home from DIA, I mourned how flat and barren the prairie looked. I began to understand why it had been called the Great American Desert. And then it began to open itself to me, showing its bushes and trees and gullies with nearly dried-up streams.
I’m not sure that much mystery is a good thing.
So you think you know how to be a writer, eh?
I’ve been reading The Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells by Ben Bova. I’m really enjoying it.
Caveat: I have no intention of ever writing science fiction. I do intend to write a fantasy novel someday, once I get all these ideas for short stories and poems on paper, but sci fi? No, doesn’t particularly interest me.
This book is great for simple explanations of how to write a story, conflict, etc.
In my twenties I got a master’s degree in English/Creative Writing. I don’t recall anyone talking much about conflict, or what a story was—they were all groovy experimental writers, and I wanted to be just like them.
And I even published my groovy experimental short novel in the 1990s. It’s called Microgravity, and it’s book number 3,000,000 on Amazon. Come on, you know you want to check it out.
I’m not sure I’m past all that, but I do know the collection of stories I wrote is relentlessly mainstream. It’s a girl’s coming of age story, all about sex and family and abortion. And whether keeping silent is the same as telling a lie.
It you had met my family, you’d understand. A few hours with the passive-aggressive Partins, and all would be clear to you. Not that I’m criticizing them because I’m so wonderfully assertive—I’m not. But if I can’t bitch about my family in a blog, then when can I?
It was great fun writing these stories. I drew many of my characters from people I knew in high school, borrowing a hairstyle here, and somebody’s red apple cheeks there (face cheeks, you pervert!), and divvying myself up among the main characters. I love Natalie because she’s so impulsive and has her head in the clouds, but my favorite is Deirdre, the perpetual outsider, obsessed with xeriscape, and hopelessly in love with a man who’s hopelessly in love with her best friend and sleeps with every woman on campus.
I swear, they’ll get together someday.
But for now, in my collection, Deirdre’s function is to comment on Natalie. People who read the 5 or 6 Deirdre stories say, “But they’re not really stories.”
OK, even I know enough about conflict to know that. Think of them as interludes. Commentary. My own personal amusement.
To get back to the sci fi book, it does have some useful exercises that I’m going to apply to some of these stories. For example, Bova says that every character should have an emotional conflict: self vs. duty, for example. Natalie’s conflict is partly freedom vs. family, partly love dreams vs. career dreams.
