Are You There, Philip Roth? It's Me, Lisa

Okay, so I've left the manuscript alone for a month and a half.  While I let it sit, I started to have second thoughts.  Who did I think I was trying to write a novel?  What nerve, what chutzpah.  It's crap.  A total waste of time.

This blog is the kind of writing I do - directionless, off the cuff, goofy essays and hack short stories.

Negative self talk is super fun, right?

I picked up the work in progress and held it in my hands.  "Just how bad are you?"  I asked it.  It stared back at me, the black letters daring me to pick up the red pen. I lay it on my bed while I assembled the colored pens, highlighters, little sticky flags and notebook.

Stalling, stalling.

I put Stephen King's On Writing on top of the stack of papers and said a silent prayer to Philip Roth that some of King's wisdom would soak through osmosis into my story.  I reminded myself that this manuscript has already undergone a major rewrite after I took out a character and plot line.  I was in deeper than I really wanted to admit.

I put my hand on top of On Writing and applied just a little pressure.  "Please don't suck."  It's a simple wish.  Just don't suck.  I'm not asking for fabulous or Earth-shattering amazing.  I'm not hoping for a Twilight or a Harry Potter.  I just want to finish this novel and find an agent who doesn't have a horrible time selling this book.  Simple.

After employing another six billion and fifty-two procrastination techniques, I sat down and plunged in.  I read aloud and marked up changes for about an hour.  Okay, I could do this.  I am doing this.  More time went by.  Was it awful?

I thought about the nine thousand and twenty-two pieces of writing advice I've read over the last few months.

Kill the adverbs.  Choose the best adjectives.  Lose the dialogue tags.  Keep the dialogue tags.  Show, don't tell.  More detail, less detail.  Don't forget to let your own voice shine through. First person, second person, third?  Alternating perspectives?  Cut out the backstory. And don't forget to eradicate that word was as much as possible.  Is this piece lyrical? Literary?

And what about your query?  It doesn't matter how good your book is if you never put together a perfect query.

It was at about that point when my lawn chair that has now become a permanent fixture in our bedroom overturned and I crawled gasping from the room.  I think I tumbled down the stairs.  A cat or three stepped around me.  The bravest sniffed my face, signaled to the rest of them and they moved delicately away. They didn't even come back with their food bowls in their mouths demanding sustenance.

MathMan came home and found me in an empty bathtub with a half-consumed wine bottle and an Etch-a-Sketch.  I wore my wedding gown that no longer zips and a straw sunhat, my red pen held between my teeth like a rose.  The work in progress was stacked neatly on the edge of the tub.  I'd planted a lipstick kiss on the top page.

In his characteristically calm manner, he surveyed the scene and gave me a half smile.  "So you're making progress then?"

Something like that.

*******

I saw this at Rachelle Gardner's blog.  It's very apropos to what I'll be doing for the next couple of weeks.

You can bet I'll be paying close attention to the word click when I proofread. 

Because it's not that kind of a story.

Happy weekend.  While I'm staining my fingers with red ink, what will you be doing?

Four Kinds of Pleasure In One Box

Prologue
He kissed her and rolled off onto his side of the bed.  "So?"
"So?"  She smiled at him.
"It felt just like any other to me."
"Me, too.  Although, for a second there, it got really warm in here."

***********

"Okay, so do you wanna go..."

"Yeah, let's go."

Chloe looked at us, her face expressionless.  "I'm going to go look for something on the other side of the store."

I followed MathMan down the aisle past the tampons and pads.  We stopped before the display of Trojans and Durexes.  Even the organic sheep prophylactics were representing.  They're made of sheep skin, not prophylactics for sheep.  I think.  I haven't researched this, so please don't quote me.

MathMan shrugged.  He grabbed a box with the word KYNG emblazoned across the front.  "What do you think?"

"Definitely appropriate."

He pointed at the box of SKYNs.  "Or maybe?"

We giggled.  Dear me, we're fourteen.  He put the KYNG box back and resumed his serious face.  This was serious business.  Preventing pregnancy and disease is not to be trifled with.  At least that's what we tell our kids.

"Did you see this?  The Pleasure Pack."  He pointed to the less screamingly obvious front of the Trojan box.  The deep purple color of it was nice, non-threatening, quite soothing.

I pulled a box from the shelf, the springy thingy that keeps the boxed items in order snapped into place, as if to draw attention to us.  I shushed it.  "Let's see what this says."  I turned over the package to read the descriptions of what constituted this Pleasure Pack.

I whispered, "Twisted Pleasure. Designed with deep spiral ribs to help stimulate both partners in their most sensitive areas.  Okay, so it's going to stimulate our egos?  That's some pretty powerful latex."

MathMan smirked.  He's a champion smirker, have I told you that?

Her Pleasure was more of the same, but the Trojan people had been broadminded enough to focus purely on the woman's pleasure.  Only, if they were being sincere about a woman's pleasure, they'd make sure it also vacuumed the house, made breakfast and loaded the dishwasher.  The right way.

Intense Ribbed had deep ribs and ultrasmooth lube.  Well now.  Who could argue with that? Shared Pleasure contained warming lubricant because everyone knows how chilly it gets in the vagina/penis areas.  I mean, if you're not careful, you could get frostbite messing around down there. All that talk about going blind?  Lies.  But frostbite? Just be careful.

MathMan continued to look at the vast array of options.  The last time we put this kind of thought into a purchase, we were buying a car that he could wreck sixteen times without totalling it.  "So?"

As with most things, we concluded that the only way to make the choice was by price.  Since there was no white box with black lettering with the simple word Rubbers on it, we decided to go with the Pleasure Pack.  It cost exactly the same as all the rest of the Durex and Trojans and had the same quantity of condoms in the box.  We congratulated ourselves on being such wise consumers.

I hid the box under something in the basket so that Chloe wouldn't be confronted with that aspect of her parents' lives right there in the middle of the store and we met up with her as she came down the main aisle.

"Ready?"

"Yep."  She didn't meet my eyes.

We stood in line and placed our items on the conveyor belt with a bit too much insouciance.  Chloe stood behind us holding a desk lamp she'd found on the clearance end cap.  "Go ahead and put that with our stuff,"  MathMan said. "We can get that for you."

Then we all tried to act like nothing.  We put our hands in our pockets, looked at the ceiling, whistled.

The checker who was getting ready to scan the items, shifted them around, trying to determine if it we were together.  I moved the condom box up to the front of the pile.  "Oh, heh heh, those are ours. Don't want to traumatize her."

The checker looked at Chloe who shrugged.  "Well, at least this isn't as bad as the time when the checker tried to insist that the KY Jelly that belonged to the woman in front of me must be mine."

********

So now you're just dying to try them, aren't you?  Go on, you can admit it.  KY will cost you extra.

See, the Germans are very serious about condoms, too. So stop that snickering right now.

The Sweet Scent of Friendship

 When I talk about you guys, and I do (it's all good! promise!), MathMan feigns interest enough to occasionally look up from his Calculus book although he might just be looking at my boobs.  The kids, on the other hand, feel compelled to qualify the relationship.  "So how do you know this person?"  Sometimes the word "know" gets air quotes.


You'd think they'd be so used to me blogging that it wouldn't matter, but for some reason it does.  I point out to them that even though I've never actually met this person or that person, having read them for a year, two, three even four in some cases, I probably know more about them than any of the friends I've made without the aid of a monitor and a motherboard.

It's an old debate for us, isn't it?  This idea of who's a real friend.  What constitutes real?  For me, what makes the friendship real is that they come to matter to me.  I care what happens to them.

Well, this weekend, I had the opportunity to add another of you to the column of people with whom I've actually visited.  For real.  I got to hang out with Fragrant Liar.   I even got to meet Miss America and Destructo and FL's daughter and son in law and the newest FL grandgirl.



FL is as funny and interesting and gorgeous as I expected her to be - even more so.  MathMan went with me because I'm still not allowed to cross the county line without supervision.  While he watched football and goofed around with FL's baby granddaughter, Fragrant Liar and I chatted mostly about....writing!  Quelle surprise.


It was so nice to talk to someone who understands the part-neurosis part-gift that is the need to write and more - the desire to be published.  We talked about current projects and future ones.  She's ahead of me in the process of finding an agent and getting published so it was really helpful for me to hear about how she'd done things.

This woman is going places.  I'm sure of it.  


This made me think that I really ought to make more of an effort to find a writers' group around here, but that would require me to put on a bra and interact with people.  Ah, there's the rub.....



Writing is a solitary thing, to be sure, but it's the human connection I find most interesting.  And each time I visit one of you, I find new things to think about, elements that could become part of story or the seed of an idea that might grow.  So thank you for that. 


And to Fragrant Liar, it was so good to meet you!  I hope we can do it again sometime soon.


Have you met online friends in the real world?  Was it what you expected? 

The Meaning of Talent

A short story inspired by this image sent to me by drydiggins who thought it would be fun for me to take requests.  Not a bad idea, actually.

She sat in the blond wood desk and wondered if she might have chosen a better skirt for the occasion. This one almost blended into the wood that seemed to mold around her body. When she'd dressed earlier in the day, it hadn't occurred to her that she might find herself ready to seduce her professor, but now? Well, it seemed her only option. She had to know.

She shifted in her seat and swung her right leg over her knee then quickly reversed motion and put both feet firmly on the floor. Her knees pressed together, she ran her tongue over her teeth.  As discreetly as she could, she placed her hand over her mouth and checked her breath. 

Dr. Hathaway paced the front of the drab classroom. The rake, he'd accentuated his brown jacket and tan pants with a teal tie. She smiled at this bit of whimsy and wondered if there weren't a wild man hoping to escape that staid interior.

The flash of blue reminded her of a tropical fish trapped in a muddy pond like the one where she used to skinny dip with her boyfriend, The Farmers Son. She always thought of him as that - The Farmer's Son. His real name was Troy, but that just seemed wrong. He should have been a Jeb or a Caleb or a Bo. A Troy didn't ride a tractor wearing just a baseball cap and his Levis with the Skoal circle imprinted into the back pocket, but a Caleb would.

Her eyes stayed on Dr. Hathaway, but now her mind had wandered to those late summer nights at the pond. The Farmer's Son stood in the moonlight, his tanned chest and abs rippled with muscle, his hand not quite hiding the black cloud from where his hardest part sprang. She started to cross her legs again and stopped. Tapped her pencil. Checked her watch.

"So what the writer is trying to do is...." His voice had a bit of that New England clip, just the faintest flat r sprinkled throughout his lectures. She pictured him in tennis whites, in khakis rolled up to show in sockless feet in faded blue Topsiders, in a Tuxedo, preparing to walk up the curved steps of a country club. She shook her head to clear it.

Dr. Hathaway stopped pacing and looked in her direction, his left eyebrow cocked just slightly above the right. His hazel eyes held her gaze for a second before he straightened his tie and resumed pacing.  He seemed to think better while in motion.

Finally, he leaned against the lectern and fiddled with his cuffs as he dismissed the class.  While she dawdled by looking through her pocketbook for nothing in particular, the room emptied.  She considered her options.  She had to know if his nearly-hyperbolic compliment about her written pieces was sincere or whether he was just like every other creep who just wanted a piece of her gorgeous ass and would use any means necessary to get her in bed.

A little frown formed on her lips as she thought about how her looks often got in the way of being taken seriously.  She didn't want to be ugly, but she would have liked to have been a little less.  A little less leggy and blond and well-proportioned and lovely of face.  It would feel so good to take a compliment without question, but she'd learned that was impossible, at least where males were concerned.

She would find out his intentions by coming on to him.  If he took the bait, she'd know that his statement that her writing was so good, it was unlike any he'd seen from his students before was just an attempt to lure her into bed through than appeal to her ego and her desire to become published some day.  If he didn't, then she felt confident that he'd meant what he said.

She closed the clasp on  her purse and hesitated.  What happened after?  If he was sincere and he refused her advances, what would she do?  How would she face him in class, on campus?  She glanced down at the notebook where she'd doodled some geometric shapes around the name Troy.  She thought about the hurt in his dark eyes when she told him how she'd mistakenly succumbed to the flattery of one of the college boys who attended a special writers' workshop at the community college.  She thought it was best to tell The Farmer's Son the truth and hoped he would understand.  He didn't.

She stood and slipped her purse strap over her shoulder.  She had to know.  If Dr. Hathaway had meant what he said and he believed her to be so talented, she'd simply apologize and explain to him that she'd been tricked before.  She'd tell him how she'd come up with this silly scheme to find out the truth from him.  Surely, he'd understand.  Writers, artists are all a little crazy and impetuous anyway, aren't they?

She conjured her sunniest smile, smoothed her skirt and started toward the front of the room where Dr. Hathaway stood with one hand on the teal tie watching her.

********

Black Magpie Theory: Goodbye, Norma Rae

I have a new post up at Black Magpie Theory.  It's Labor Day so you can guess the subject.  Yes, I'm writing about shoes.

And It Wasn't Even On The List

This ad has nothing to do with this post. Or does it?

 We experienced a close call here the other day.

MathMan, who is working multiple jobs - teacher, department chair, and coach to girls' softball, the boys' JV basketball team and baseball (okay maybe that's 5 jobs) - is clocking long days that often run from 6:30 a.m. with the start of his long commute until he returns home at 9pm from some coaching job.  When he gets home, he's not done.  He still has work emails to answer and send, lesson planning, papers to grade  and whatever other random stuff comes up.  And two kids who sometimes need help in math.

The man is on overload.

He was at the end of his patience about some work related thing when he came into the bathroom and said, "I am doing everything I can and it's never enough."

What triggered his exasperation may have been work-related, but the impact of the words hit me square in the forehead I was exfoliating when he stormed into the bedroom to search for his calculus book appendage.

Old instincts kicked in.  We've lived this life before.  Early in our marriage, MathMan managed a Radio Shack and worked about eighty hours a week.  I worked regular hours and took care of the apartment.  I hated that dynamic so much that I once sat down and made a list of reasons why he should find another job. 

Now I'm not even working regular hours.  Am I not pulling my weight?  I'm looking for a job and writing a novel, but that doesn't look like work.  Writing is what I love to do.  Keeping house doesn't count for much because so much of it is invisible.  I'm alone much of the time so no one can see what I do.

If a woman cleans a toilet and no one is there to see her do it, did it really happen?

I blinked at MathMan  as I tried to think of a response.  The old fight or flight response poked its head up and sniffed around.

Down boy.

"What do you mean by that?"  I'd decided to ask for a clarification, for him to flesh out that thought, to tell me if I should be doing more.

Something in my face must have indicated that the old instinct was alert now.  He picked up his book and explained that his job frustrations were mounting and he was struggling to juggle all his roles.  He was clear - this wasn't a home issue.

The fight or flight instinct settle back into place and quieted.  I tried to be supportive, mostly by just listening.  He went back to his desk to finish one last work assignment before coming to bed.  While I finished getting ready for bed, I silently congratulated us for getting better at this.  In the old days, this would have escalated into ugly words before it become a tense, angry silence punctuated by only the most necessary of polite words through gritted teeth.

I also thought about what else I could be doing to ease his burden and to show how much I do appreciate all that he does.  My thoughts ranged from taking over the yard work to getting this novel published.  A wide range, I know, but I have been so lucky to have him support and encourage me every step of the way.  Even when I know he must be thinking it would be nice for me to have a regular, paying job again.

I pulled out my notebook and jotted down a few ideas.  I'd talk to him about it later.

The next morning, I asked him how he was feeling.

"Much better.  Venting helped."

"I'm glad to hear it."

"Yeah, I needed that.  Thanks."

I smiled at him and swung my legs over the side of the bed. 

He touched me on the back and laughed.  "The fact that you've taken to sleeping topless doesn't hurt either."

Gratuitous pic of my honey.

The Pursuit of Happiness

"You smile a lot."

"Do I?"

"Yeah, it makes it hard to tell what you're really feeling."

Sometimes the way my fourteen year old son is able to just say things - astute things - blows me away.

"That's an interesting observation.  You know, I'm reading a book about women and happiness and the author goes into how Americans, especially American women, are programmed to be cheerful."

"I didn't say you were cheerful.  You just smile alot.  Like at that intersection.  You smiled at that guy and he smiled back."

"Did that bother you?"

"No.  I just realized you do that a lot. Doesn't matter if it's a man or woman driving the other car.  You just smile."

"So when I smile, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm happy."

"'zactly."

He's right.   My smile has no connection to what's going on inside.  I haven't shared this with you guys, but I'm back on the appetite suppressant, aka The Mean Pill.  When I'm taking it, it works.  I lose weight (8lbs gone!).  But I also become a bit of a powder keg with a short fuse.  My mean mouth, otherwise held back on oh so many occasions, is given free reign and instead of just letting things slide, I become hell-bent on pointing out all the petty grievances I have with my family. 

I become yelly. Chloe, who coined the phrase The Mean Pill, also had another way to describe my behavior when I'm taking this drug.  Raging around.  Lovely, right? There she goes, raging around like an angry elephant.  A pack of hyenas.  A wild-haired woman brandishing a jug of bleach and a toilet brush.

Then I hear myself and I stop.  Take a breath.  I come through with quick apologies. Remind myself that next time - filter, filter, filter!

After I've been on the meds for a bit, it smooths out, but in the transition, I become the pill.  I guess you could say that, even if you can't tell when I'm happy, you certainly won't have any trouble knowing when I'm angry.  I broadcast it loudly and colorfully.  My mother would die of shame if she could hear me.  Heck, I die a little of shame right before I apologize to the most recent victim of my verbal assaults. 

I suppose the best thing you can say about this is that at least I don't fake smile while I'm shredding my loved ones.  The remedy for now is for me to stay locked in the basement or to keep the duct tape over my mouth when everyone is around.  Because no matter how many times I do tell them what sends me over the edge, they still do and don't do the things that turn push that rage button.

"So what do you think, Nate?  Should I stop smiling when I'm not happy?"

"Nah.  I don't think it's a bad thing."

"But the book suggests that maybe it is.  It keeps us from being more aware of our emotions."

"Mom?  We're Americans.  We don't have emotions."

"That's what the book says!"

"Okay, now be quiet.  We've reached our talking limit.  Here listen to this."

So what about you?  Do you wear your emotions on your sleeve?  Cram it all down until it's an unrecognizable nugget?  Okay, who besides me are the phony smilers?  And are there any other rageaholics or is it just me?