Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Sittin’ on the Fence
Lately I haven’t been writing, for a variety of
reasons. In the interim I have been
pitching some of my work to agents and publishers and hoping for anything to
stick. In the beginning writing was a
way to challenge myself, to see if I could actually do it. Then it turned into crafting stories that I enjoyed
reading. Just because I like something
doesn’t mean anyone else will, but I always hope it will speak to someone else. You usually don’t get a second chance to make
a good first impression so you’re always paranoid about your appearance—you don’t
want your query to be rife with errors, and you want your opening chapter or
writing excerpt to grab an editor’s attention immediately. Any time you put yourself out there, you set
yourself up for rejection. I’m not a fan
of rejection in any way, shape, or form, but I guess it’s just part of life.
Monday, September 23, 2013
Four Down and Twelve Across
When I
completed graduate school, I was allowed to, along with the other students
working in the university library system, to have my name placed inside a
book. I didn’t even have to think—I
chose “The Boxcar Children” out of the Education Library, because it was one of
my favorites when I was a kid and remains so to this very day. My choice was not high-minded or pretentious
or even academic; it was simply a work that was meaningful to my life,
particularly my passion for reading.
Oddly enough I was not a shy child, but I was painfully self-conscious. Over the years as I found out that being
outgoing was a mistake more often than not, I retreated back into my shell and
allowed books to be my friends. I read
all of the original Boxcar Children series by Gertrude Chandler Warner, as well
as the ghostwritten later books, which were good but kind of amusing when you
consider the arrested development of the characters. They definitely lived a lot of life over the
course of their never-aging selves.
Another
of my favorites was a picture book, “Winston’s Red Boots”. I’m not really sure why aside from the art
and the fact that I didn’t have a lot of books or toys at that point, and thus
made do with what I had. I enjoyed it so
much that I took it to school and recreated the cover for an assignment about
my favorite book. I still have the work,
hardcover book on my shelf—the price tag tells me it was purchased at LA Joe
for .99. Hey, maybe that’s where my love
for boots and nautical stuff originated.
Then again, Winston’s boots contained a treasure map and I always loved
the ideas of maps and treasure and adventure.
Two more
books I loved when I was older were “Gone-Away Lake” and “Return to Gone-Away”
by Elizabeth Enright. Again, I loved
adventures and mysteries and these stories tied in a historical perspective and
were so vivid that I could see everything in my mind as it happened, even
without the aid of the books’ illustrations.
What were some of your favorite children's books?
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Right or Wrong
I’ve
joked in this blog in the past about writer’s block, but now I well and truly
have it. After writing ten novels in
just over a year, with little in the way of a break, I find that for now I have
no desire to muster the amount of empathy that would be required to tell
someone else’s story. I have reached
this conclusion via several sources, a culmination of events that I don’t wish
to share. Needless to say, I am
suffering the usual self-doubts. I don’t
possess an ounce of self-esteem so that’s nothing out of the ordinary. For a period of time I enjoyed losing myself
on the page and creating other worlds, venturing into places and relationships
that I can only imagine in the depths of my mind. Perhaps someday I will again, but I am not in
the right mindset to create, craft, or enjoy the creative process. I also understand that a lot of writing is
finding your inspiration and pushing through adversity—but sometimes, I just
can’t.
Friday, September 13, 2013
When the Credits Roll
When I was
in graduate school, people were always picking up hobbies—cooking, gardening,
even knitting. Me? I picked up…soap operas. I didn’t just stumble upon soap operas like
Darwin found the Galapagos Islands; I have a long history with them. When I was a kid, I don’t remember ever
hearing of daycare, and preschool didn’t arrive in these parts until I entered
first grade. During the daytime, non-school
hours, you napped, played, and watched soaps with your babysitter. I watched nearly all of them at one point or
another, and was lucky enough to see them before budget cutting, interfering
networks, and myopic producers gutted and ruined and murdered them. In fact, I’m pretty sure the opening credits
of Guiding Light inspired my lifelong fascination with lighthouses.
But as a
kid, my favorites were “The Young and the Restless”—it was so interesting and
well-paced that you could miss an entire year and pick right back up where you’d
left off; “The Bold and the Beautiful”, with its larger-than-life characters
and bizarrely named brothers, Ridge and Thorne (!?); and “Days of our Lives”,
for its rich history, family ties, and byzantine, arresting drama. It’s sad that you can no longer channel surf
and see what’s happening in the other networks; you have four options on your
daytime dial that you can either take or leave.
And I loved
these credits—Edward and Lila! Luke and Laura!
Bobbie and Tony! Felicia! Mac! Lucy’s eyebrow! Fantastic.
I was
partially drawn back into daytime when those idiots savagely murdered “Guiding
Light”, which by that time had become a sad shell of its former grand, opulent
self. But I also had a coworker and
friend who became my soap sounding board and reminded me of the greatness of
Steve and Kayla. Seriously, Steve wore
an eye patch—is there anything cooler than that?
This was
great, too.
I spent
quite a few months reliving Steve and Kayla’s two-year or so heyday, from their
first kiss to Steve’s two previously-unknown siblings showing up and all of the
resulting obstacles, to Kayla’s marriage to Steve’s brother and finally her
poisoning and deafness. Anyone who knows
my taste in television knows of my love for “Dallas” and the characters of Ray
and Donna who had their own storyline featuring sign language. Suffice it to say that things went downhill
soon after Steve and Kayla wed, but their yacht wedding was one of my favorites
in daytime history.
Over the
past few years of unemployment, loneliness, empty days, and more unemployment,
the soaps have been my steady companions.
Sometimes it is painful to watch them, and I have recently had to dump
two of the remaining four from my viewing schedule. If “The Young and the Restless” doesn’t clean
up its act, it may be next. “General
Hospital” provides me with the most consistent enjoyment these days, even if it
is, at times, uneven. But the hour
invariably features a decent mix of veteran characters, romance, intrigue, and
children who are actually connected to the canvas in a real way. I only hope it will continue to be as good
for as long as I’m a viewer, or at least as long as networks still believe in
this uniquely-American form of storytelling.
There aren’t many multi-generational, family-centered programs left
these days—nor are there many you can remember from childhood.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Cowboys Like Us
My love
for the series “Castle” is well-known, and I’m not shy about promoting the show
to other prospective viewers. Over the
years I have also seen Nathan Fillion in “Desperate Housewives,” “Pasadena,”
and “Waitress”, so wasn’t it inevitable I’d eventually get around to watching
“Firefly”? Thanks to a friend who sent
me the DVD set for my birthday, I was able to view it. The foremost question, of course, was would I
enjoy it? I love “Star Wars” and “Star
Trek” and “Lost in Space” and “The Twilight Zone”, and the fifteen or so
episodes I was able to see of “The X-Files” were great, but I don’t, as a rule,
seek out science fiction. Call me a lazy
viewer: sometimes I just can’t commit to something with that much
mythology. My impression after viewing
“Firefly” is that you either get it or you don’t—thankfully, I got it. I was fascinated by the idea of a space
western: cows and horses and taverns and
spaceships and futuristic weapons.
Fillion’s Captain Malcolm Reynolds was a layered character who didn’t
take crap from anyone, and the show was imbued with a lot of heart, humor, and
even pathos. There were plenty of
unexpected twists and turns, and I find myself wondering, with every
short-lived show, how a second season might have looked. I still need to see
the follow-up movie, “Serenity.”
Back to
my point about “getting it”. It reminds
me of a show that I loved as a kid, “Eerie, Indiana”, in which the lead
character and his best friend seemed to exist in an alternate universe in which
they were the only keen observers. So
much of life is subjective, including television shows, because we reflect our
own set of feelings onto the characters and their plights. If I didn’t already have a fascination with
westerns and the cowboy lifestyle, or an appreciation of Nathan Fillion, my
enjoyment of “Firefly” may have been much less.
Thanks for the laughs, Serenity gang—I needed them.
Yes, I know this capture is from "Desperate Housewives". It's what was in my DVD player at the time.
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Home Improvement
In the
process of self-improvement and blog improvement, I have also been trying to
accomplish some things around the house.
Easier said than done. It’s much
simpler to buy something than it is, years down the road, to figure why exactly
you bought it. The purpose of this task that resembles digging a trench with a
spoon and fork is to provide myself with much-needed workspace. My laptop allows me to travel from place to
place, but I really need a work area that will be free from distractions. There are a lot of “why’s” that come from
this endeavor, too. Why do I need a
dedicated workspace? I don’t exactly
have hobbies. I have no clue what
writing is considered in the grand scheme of things; it’s something I’m serious
about, but that doesn’t mean anyone else takes it seriously as a career. And since I am now falling back into familiar
habits, it is time to stop blogging for today.
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