Aftermath

May 4


“I thought The Bureaucrat was gonna ask me to file a goddamn TPS report after that meeting, iswhat I wasthinking,” Jannon slurred her words only slightly, despite having had a three-margarita lunch. Her voice crackled through the phone because she was underground, and Graham struggled to talk back to her in hushed, work-appropriate tones.

“What?”

“What? I can’t hear you, I’m—whccsshhhttt—fucking metro,” her voice popped through the static.

‘Christ,’ Graham thought. “Ok, well, I’ll see you at home, baby,” he said. As he hung up the phone, he couldn’t help but wonder why she went and got drunk in the middle of the day, and how she could get away with begging off from work by telling her boss that she was ‘sick’. Graham opened up an IM window to Sean.

Graham281: You heard from your girl J?
xcSeanxc: jannon? what up?
Graham281: Some new boss is a bureaucracy freak, so she got drunk during lunch. She’s on her way home.
xcSeanxc: thats my sister for ya :)
Graham281: It blows my mind that she can do that in the federal government, while I’m afraid to take a day off for pneumonia over here. If I’m out sick, nobody else is going to meet my deadlines for me, and all hell would break loose trying to get the magazine out on time.
xcSeanxc: i dig
Graham281: Oh, well. Our tax dollars may be hard at work, but at least I know that our government isn’t.
xcSeanxc: lol
Graham281: Back to work.
xcSeanxc: ya, i got a final tomorrow
Graham281: Good luck.
xcSeanxc: thx

Graham turned his attention away from his computer and cell phone, toward the stack of index forms that had accumulated on his desk. If he could only finish them now, he wouldn’t have to worry about them come October. But all he could think of was how agreeably tipsy Jannon would be when he got home later.

It had been a long winter, and a short cold spring, so people were relieved when the air today was so warm that they wouldn’t catch their deaths if they went out with bare necks. The last of the melted snow and ice ran through the streets and down to the gutters, where it trickled down with an audible tinkle. And in this city, the private alleyways of the tony little houses had turned into private creeks, overlooked by the houses’ open windows and the hired help in the front yards, hurriedly getting rid of last year’s leaves to make way for this year’s grass.

That’s what Jannon saw as she stumbled gamely through her neighborhood, high on the beautiful weather and on her own cleverness. “Ah,” she said aloud, to nobody in particular. “If only more of my problems could be solved by getting trashed in the middle of the day!” There was no doubt in her mind that her supervisor knew what was up, but because he was also a little bit slarmied (only Jannon knew about the flask he kept in his desk drawer), then it was fine. And though her perception had been somewhat tempered by the drink (curse you, Lauriol Plaza, and your delicious mango margaritas!) it had seemed to Jannon that he was in more of a rush than usual to get rid of whatever it was on his computer screen when she came in to see him. ‘Such is life in this city,’ she mused, lustily inhaling the green scent of the late spring thaw. ‘You don’t ask questions, you get what you want.’

Though she was a bit higher on the totem pole than a staff ass, Jannon’s job was mostly clerical work. She was too highly educated for that kind of job, and everybody knew it. So they let her finish her work in half the time that she was allotted, and goof off for the rest of it. She spent a lot of time on the internet, and today, she’d spent a lot of money on drinks at lunch. Life was good.

Then she saw her.

A girl stood on the corner. She looked to be 25 or so, about Jannon’s age, but a bit shorter and even paler in complexion. Her long, dark hair swirled around her head in waves, and everything about her, from her crisply ironed pastel blue tennis outfit to her huge brown-black eyes—it all seemed to sparkle in the sunshine. The only detail out of place was her shoes: tall, white galoshes with deep purple soles and a smattering of forget-me-nots printed all over them. Jannon stopped walking for a moment, struck by the vision of the girl (and a short wave of nausea: perhaps she shouldn’t have had that last enchilada). There were no cars on the road, but the girl did not cross the street.

“Excuse me,” Jannon said, approaching her. “Can I help you get somewhere?”

“Not all who wander are lost,” she mumbled under her breath.

“Pardon?”

“I’m not lost, thank you,” the girl said. Her voice was velvety and seemed to disappear by weaving itself into the warm May breezes.

“Oh, do you live around here?” Jannon was not the sort to make idle conversation, but she was tipsy and her nostrils were full of early flowers, and there was simply something almost magical about this girl that made Jannon want to get to know her.

“Yes,” she said. “I moved in—a couple blocks that way—just last week.” That voice was like butter, melting into the warm air and coating Jannon with something that was somehow pleasantly unctuous.

“Well! I’m Jannon!” she stuck her hand out. “I live down there.” She nodded in the direction of her house. “Welcome to the neighborhood.”

The girl shook her hand and smiled a bright white smile. “I’m Maddie. And, thanks.”

They stood on the corner, smiling at each other in silence for what seemed like five minutes.

“I guess I’ll be seeing you around,” Jannon said.

“Sure,” Maddie smiled, and started to cross the street toward the metro stop.

“Oh hey,” Jannon called after her. “I like your boots. But it’s supposed to be…”

“Thanks!” Maddie called back.

“…sunny.” The sky had gone dark while Jannon and Maddie were standing there in conversation, but Maddie’s smile had been so bright, Jannon hadn’t noticed. A stiff breeze rustled the new leaves on the trees. The water started to fall in fist-sized drops, and Jannon ran the rest of the way home, dodging the rain until it started falling faster and smaller.

***

There was nothing about this day that would have made him think of Charles, but that’s where Graham’s mind wandered as he walked home in the rain. The forecast hadn’t mentioned rain, but luckily, he had his emergency umbrella. Perhaps it was the reminder of his Boy Scout-like preparedness that made him think of Charles, his friend and mentor in Eagle Scouts, and his beloved older brother. His brother the soldier had been an officer, and a gentleman. He laughed a little: the most prepared person that Graham had ever known could not have possibly prepared for 9/11. A raindrop blew under the umbrella and landed on the top of Graham’s head, running down his face like a tear. It had been almost five years since Graham had started shaving his head in memoriam.

Even in the rain, it was a beautiful day. The wind rustled the tree branches and whirled the raindrops around like miniature tornadoes. Charles used to like rainy days, Graham recalled, reaching into his pocket to grab his keys.

“Jannon! I’m home!” he called, making sure to rustle the keys in the lock particularly loudly. Jannon didn’t like to be startled when somebody came into the house, and she was even more prone to fits of anxiousness when she was tipsy.

“Graham, daaah-ling!” she effused, breezing into the room in her kimono. ‘Classic Jannon,’ he thought, as he wrapped his arms around her. He liked the way her hair smelled like Herbal Essence shampoo.

“Did you get caught in the rain, babe?” he asked.

“I did,” she grinned. “But I met the most wonderful new neighbor!” Her cheeks were flushed with her enthusiasm. Graham liked the way that she had put her short, dirty-blonde hair back with sparkly clips, and he liked the feel of her soft, white skin against his dark brown hands. He liked looking at her without her glasses on, so he could stare directly into her watery blue eyes.

“Oh yeah? Was he cute?”

She pouted, her eyes narrowing. “Come on! You don’t even know—”

“All right, all right, tell me about our new neighbor!” he chuckled.

“She just moved in a little while ago. Her name is Maddie. And she’s gorgeous. I’ve never seen anyone quite so beautiful in my life.”

“Mattie?” Graham asked. “Like, short for Martha?”

“No, Maddie, like short for Madeline.”

“Well, I’ll have to keep an eye out for this Maddie, then, won’t I?”

“You won’t have to be on any kind of special lookout,” Jannon smiled. “You’ll just see her, trust me.”

“Any chance of…” Graham started to ask.

“Nope!” Jannon laughed. Whenever she came home praising a female friend, Graham took the opportunity to ask for a threesome. It happened often enough that he didn’t even have to ask the entire question anymore. “But if it were to happen at some point…which it won’t…but if it were, it would be with someone of Maddie’s caliber.”

“Wow!” Graham laughed, too. “Now I’ve got to see her.” Jannon whacked him in the arm once, for good measure. He started trying to tickle her, and Jannon started trying to strip him, because his clothes were still wet from walking in the rain. Jannon wanted him dry so he wouldn’t soak their bed by accident when she pushed him onto it and had her way with him. She wanted him dry so that he could sit at the table with her after that, eating leftover Chinese food and drinking Yuengling while they talked about their days. She wanted to tell him all about the new boss, the flask, the computer, and the margaritas. But first, she wanted him dry.

One Hundred

Okay, I finally made it to my hundredth post! It's only been, what, four years? Here's to hitting the next hundred before 2012!

I was looking for cute images of the number 100,
but I saw one made of cupcakes, so this
is the photo you get. I made these.
Pretend they spell out "100." 

To celebrate, I thought I would go back into the Critically Ambiguous Truth in Drinking archives and actually finish one of the many story fragments there. After reading the beginning of this story over and over to refamiliarize myself with it, I'm excited to say that I can definitely see some improvement in my voice and narrative flow since then.

This was the story about the woman who comes back to her apartment and finds a strange gift. The beginning can be found here: http://critical-drinking.blogspot.com/2006/09/open-your-gift.html

And now, for the thrilling continuation:

---

"You again?!" my landlord's mobster voice barked through the earpiece of my Blackberry. "What, ya got another rat or somethin'?" Last month, I had a dead rat decomposing between layers of drywall in my bathroom. Getting it out of there was the apartment equivalent of open-heart surgery. But for my landlord, a thoroughly misplaced New Yorker, it was just another rat.

"No, Mr. Angelos," I said. "Nothing like that. I just--"

"Ya got bees?" he asked.

"What? No, I don't have...bees?"

"Okay, good," he said, relief in his voice. I couldn't help but laugh a little. This conversation was distracting, at least.

"I'm calling because I had a package delivered yesterday, and I wanted to ask you about it."

"What package?"

"It's a gift box, with a bow on it. I'm sure you saw it, because someone had to open my door to put it inside, and you're the only one who has a key. Right?"

"I ain't bin to yer building since Thoisday," he said. "No packages."

"Are you sure?"

"I keep a hundred tenants' full names, phone numbuhs, and payment statuses in my head and she asks me if I'm sure I ain't dropped by?! Oy. Ya need anything else, or can I go about my Satuhday now?"

"That's all," I said into the phone. "Thanks, Mr. Angelos." He hung up without saying goodbye, which only served to punctuate the problem at hand: what was I supposed to do about this mysterious gift?

I paced a little before settling onto the couch, where I could keep a watchful eye on it. If something so strange was so insistently exerting itself into my life, would it be prudent to accept it? Or would that be dangerous? I was so terrified of this gift that I'd put it out in the hallway before going to sleep. I did the lock and the chain, both of which were still done. Yet, the gift had somehow made its way inside again.

Starbucks is where I go on awkward first dates, to see whether the guy orders something more frou-frou than me. I rationalized the decision to myself as I made it: 'It is clearly meant to be mine, so I can take it to Starbucks to open it if I damn well please. If it turns out to be evil, I'll see if it orders a decaf nonfat soy caramel macchiato.' So I showered and got dressed.

Nestled under my arm, the gift seemed to lurch with every step as I walked to the coffee shop, like the box was anxious to be opened. It was a short walk, but each step seemed heavier as I went along. I ordered an iced Earl Grey and sat in an armchair by the front window.

When my fingers slid through a seam in the wrapping, I felt a chill course through my body. The sensation on my fingertips was like touching my own freshly-moisturized face--warm, soft, familiar. I pulled on the flap. The wrapping fell away from the box as though my gentle tug on the flap had started a chain reaction in whatever machinery had been holding it together. And, in fact, it was a box that I held in my hands, a sturdy affair made of stiff, white, glossy cardboard. This box did not suffer from the same affliction as the wrapping the night before: it was immediately clear that I had to lift the lid of the box from the bottom to see what was inside. I set the box on the table and sipped my tea.

When I looked around for the discarded wrapping, I thought that some fastidious Starbucks employee must have cleared it away. But as I hadn't seen a fastidious Starbucks employee since 1996, I had to assume that the wrapping paper (or whatever it was) had vanished just as mysteriously as the entire gift had appeared. I quickly looked back at the box, just to be sure that it hadn't pulled the same kind of vanishing act. It was still there, on the table, radiating the same soft glow as it had when it was wrapped.

"What's in the box?" said a voice behind me. The force of my startlement nearly launched my cup of iced tea at the window. I wanted to admonish the man for sneaking up on me, but my voice caught in my throat.

"Well?" he said, glancing--furtively?--alternately at my face and the box.

"I don't know," I said.

"Only one way to find out," he said. Before I could answer him, the barista said his name, causing him to pick up a coffee from the counter and leave the store. It was me and the box, alone again.

The lid of the box, I found out, was not heavy at all. It came up from the box easily and quickly. By opening the box, I had fully committed myself to finding out what was inside, whether the contents more greatly resembled those of Pandora's box or Marcellus Wallace's suitcase. Inside the box, a machine made of metal and some other materials I couldn't identify gleamed expectantly.

I wrapped my hand around it in order to lift it out of the box, so as to better examine my prize. As soon as my skin came in contact with the machine, it leapt into motion. The machine was reminiscent of the kind of perpetual motion machine you might find on a boss's desk, a shiny affair with what appeared to be a visible clockwork inside. On Monday, I took it into the office and set it on my desk. Its glow brightened my tiny cubicle and its silent motion often served as a welcome distraction from the daily grind.

I thought nothing of it for three years, other than to pack it carefully with my framed family photo and my ceramic tea-for-one service whenever I moved from desk to desk up the corporate ladder.

It happened to catch the eye of an intern who came to my desk on some errand or another.

"What is that?" she asked.

"What, this?" I had grown so accustomed to its presence on my desk that I was practically immune to its charms. She nodded.

"It's a perpetual motion machine, I guess," I said.

"What do you mean, you guess?" she asked. "How does it work?"

I looked at it for a long time. The gears in my brain turned at the same rate as the machine, its shiny parts tumbling and resetting endlessly. The machine had no discernible source of power, and yet, I'd never had to restart it from rest.

"I don't know," I said. I stood up from my chair, picked up the machine, and pushed the chair under my desk. I put on my coat.

"Hey, where are you going?" the intern asked, still holding the sheaf of papers she had brought for me.

"Somewhere," I said. "You'll hear something from me soon."

The machine caught the harsh light of the winter sun and glittered in my hand. Now that I finally knew what I had, what should I do with it?

Object lessons

My husband gave me a book about writing song lyrics for Christmas. (If you're reading this, hon, I need a book about writing music next time.) I decided to read a little bit of it today because we're barricaded in by a wall of wind and snow. Again.

There are some writing exercises in the beginning of the book where they ask you to write about an object or a sensation or something, to mine the depths of your sense memories. I did two, and I always feel like I go off track with these things, because I end up following a story. Here they are, for your snowtime enjoyment. The first was an object of my choosing, the second was a sensation prompt in the book. See if you can guess what they were.

I.

The tastes of honey, of smoked meats and dried autumn leaves mix in the air while you breathe, more deeply than usual, and I drink from your glass of port, red and sweet. It's dark, but the light is coming from somewhere, and the wine is flowing, and my dress is flowing, and my arms are warm in your tuxedo jacket. You in your shirtsleeves, hair rumpled, bow tie sticking out of the pocket at my breast, I feel the glamour of the day in my heels and toes, cramped for so long in shining gold straps. This is the party of the year, and I'm not sure whether I'll remember it in the morning, except for that smell--which will last for two days, at least.

II.

This is not the way I intended for it to happen, me, submerged and soaked, air trapped in my lungs by closed mouth, puffed cheeks, stubborn nostrils. You threw me in the pool and I stayed down as long as I could out of spite, letting out a bubble when the old air started burning my throat and I started to get dizzy. I was spiteful, but only because I didn't know how to tell you I loved the attention. A part of me--the oxygen-starved, lightheaded part, no doubt--wished that I would pass out so you'd have to jump in after me, warm arms around my unconscious, clammy flesh. You'd have to breathe for me, then, salty mouth on my chlorinated one, lips, pressure, hot breath, you, me, a long moment before I breathe again. I can't hold my breath anymore, so I surface, air foreign to me, sunshine, your gaze, which I can feel prickling at my skin like the boundary between pool water and hot July air.

Tying up the loose ends from 2009

I left you hanging on a number of fronts, and for this, I apologize. Please have some closure, on me:

Screenwriting Contest
After the guy in charge claimed to have confirmed that my score had been re-sent, I continued to send him enough extremely polite e-mails to prompt him to ask me to send my entry directly to him so that he could score it himself. He did this quite promptly, and I was surprised to receive a fairly decent score and some rather positive comments. In fact, it was quite conveniently the highest score one could get without qualifying for the second round. I wonder how scoring my entry on time would have changed the outcome of the contest.

Novel Queries
I heard from one other agent, who is currently not taking any new clients. That's rejection #2, I suppose. I believe this means that I currently have one query (to two agents at the same firm) still floating around in the wait-space.

Tweet Me a Story
Those who follow me on Twitter may have seen a few plaintive tweets from me, asking for votes on my 140-character stories for this contest. That's partially what the title of the last post was referring to, but I'm not bitter. (I'm not, really. Amused sarcasm doesn't really translate to the blogosphere the way I'd like it to.) I did not move on to the second round of the contest, but I still consider it an accomplishment to have two stories that made it into the top 25 in my group.

Economic Crisis
Oh, sorry...I don't actually know how this one ends.

National Novel Writing Month
You may have noticed that I went on blogging hiatus for National Novel Writing Month. Happily, I achieved my word count (as seen in the celebratory graphic at right). The story leaves something to be desired, though. I won't be finishing it without massive revisions. I learned, in this experience, that third-person omniscient storytelling is not a strength of mine. While it may be a bit limiting to write in character in terms of being able to express what other characters are thinking and feeling, I find it much more personally satisfying. This particular story may require 3rd person narration, though...hence the massive revisions.

Blogging
Yes, I am doing that again.

The de facto writing exercise I happened to amuse myself with this morning

So, I'm sure you've all heard of FML. It's an anonymous gripe board for when your life just seems like one ridiculous (possibly ironic) mishap after another. Well. This morning, my husband sent me a link to MLIA--My Life Is Average. But as I read, I found that the stories were not average at all. Many of them, in fact, were tales of unusually humorous or strange situations. For example:

"Today, the woman's rugby team I am on was traveling to Texas for a game. Our van stopped at McDonald's to get something to eat. As 10 girls order their food, a man approaches our male coach. The guy looks at all us girls then at our coach then asks, 'Are all of these your daughters?' My coach, without missing a beat, says, 'No. They're my wives.' The look on that man's face was priceless. MLIA"

The complete non-averageness of this exchange disturbed me. So I took it upon myself to rewrite it to make it actually average (except for the spelling and grammar, upon which I improved). To wit:

Today, the women's rugby team I am on was traveling to Texas for a game. Our van stopped at McDonald's to get something to eat. As 10 girls are ordering their food, a man approaches our coach. The guy looks at all of us girls, then at our coach, and asks, "Is this a field hockey team?" My coach, without missing a beat, says, "No. It's a rugby team." Then we ate our food. MLIA

Now that's average!

Here's another one from the site:

"Today, I was walking across campus near the end of the day. I look out over the lawn to see two HUGE leaf piles. When I got closer to see what was going on, I see my History teacher hiding behind one of the piles with a water gun about to attack my English teacher in the other pile. They were having a war. I feel like I chose the right school. MLIA."

What? How is a water fight between teachers average in any way? That seems downright unusual, to me. Here's how I would write it:

Today, I was walking across campus near the end of the day. I look out over the lawn to see two huge leaf piles. When I got closer to see what was going on, I saw two groundsworkers raking the leaves. MLIA.

Much better.

Ok, one more...you twisted my arm. From the site:

"Today, I was waiting at a main bus stop with a few other people. A man started to smoke and a young boy fell to the ground and crawled away on his hands and knees. His mother asked what he was doing and he pointed to the man and yelled 'Smoke is bad! Get down low and go go go!' I hope he still acts this way when he's in his late teens. MLIA"

And my take:

Today, I was waiting at a main bus stop with a few other people. A man started to smoke and he got a few dirty looks from the other people at the stop. He had to put the cigarette out when it was about halfway done because the bus came. Then we got on. MLIA.

I thought I would share that with you, in case you were bored at work or something on this lovely pre-Halloween Friday. The link is above...you can make your own fun!

Real Live Writer

http://literaryrejectionsondisplay.blogspot.com/

I found this link just in time! I can enjoy it with the knowing nod of an insider, having just received my first real rejection.

In addition to a line regarding the personal thing I wrote to the agent, here it is:

"I regret to say that I don’t feel that I’m the most appropriate agent for your work.

However, opinions vary considerably in this business, and I wish you the best of luck in your search for representation."

It's not so scary or bad, and I have to say that I'm not really depressed about it at all. Every good novel gets rejected at least once. And really, the idea is to get someone who will be passionate about my work...if he's not the guy for the job, then he's not the guy for the job. I hope I find someone who is!

I also hope I'm this sunny after rejection #18.

In other putting-myself-out-there writing news, I did enter that screenwriting contest. I wrote my scene, sent it in, and never heard back. Yep. That's right. The score they promised never showed up. I sent an extremely polite e-mail about it to their customer service address (which apparently they never check). Then today, I got an e-mail from the competition that basically said, "mea culpa, if you never got a score, e-mail me personally at the following address." So, I sent another extremely polite e-mail (excerpted from the last one, actually) and am hoping--enfin--for a response. I'll keep you posted.

Aughhh

I had a really bad day at work on Friday. I know it's not the best idea to discuss specifics and such on a blog, so I won't. I tried to write about it in generalities, but that didn't work, either. Suffice it to say, I did nothing wrong, but I keep replaying everything in my head to figure out how I could have done it better. Any solution I can come up with clearly falls into the category of "not my job." Now, I really just don't want to go to work tomorrow, as I'm dreading facing this ridiculous bullshit all over again. But other people are counting on me to be there, so I'm gonna put on my big girl suit and haul arse out of bed tomorrow morning like everyone else.

Maybe someday I'll hit it big--sell my book (and the next one) and then write full time. I bet it'd only take me 6 months to finish a book, instead of a year! At least I'm seeing the light at the end of this one. I can't believe NaNoWriMo is coming up again. I signed up, and I've heard tell that there may be a little writing group starting up for November.

The book I'll be writing is the first in a four-book series. That's a bit ambitious, I know, but all (except the last one) can stand alone. I don't want to spoil it (for me or anyone else!), but I can at least tell you the tag line: "Love, war, and cupcakes at the end of the world."

My October is already looking crammed...not only do I have to finish the edits on this book, but I have to get my query letter ready to go and send it out. Then I have to start seriously planning the next book. I have the generalities down, but I need a little more of a plot outline before I'll feel comfortable writing in November.

I'll also be practicing extra hard this month for next month's concert. I survived the last rehearsal for the sole reason that my ear is not terrible. We had to play this ridiculously high passage by ourselves, and I actually did it (maybe not as confidently as I might have liked, but hey) and didn't make a fool of myself. By our next rehearsal (in two weeks), I intend to know all that music cold.

So...do you have any advice for navigating office situations that seem more like "The Office" or "Office Space" than they should? Or, conversely, can you distract me with your tales of excellent projects on your horizons?

Six Sentences

Check it out: http://sixsentences.blogspot.com/

After learning about the six sentences blog, I went back through all my fragments, the little bits of writing I've been putting on this blog since I opened it. Can you believe that none of them are six sentences long? There were a couple of fours, fives, sevens, and eights...but no sixes. Unbelievable!

Perhaps I think in strange cadences, requiring that extra breath, that last word. Could you write something incredible in six sentences? Every time I think about what I might write in six sentences, I feel afraid to suck. I think I'm going to have to just keep doing what I do, and hope that some day, something works out to be six sentences by lucky accident.

That last paragraph was four sentences, by the way, as was the one before it. Maybe I do tend to think in multiples (and factors!) of four.

Recession jokes!

In the coming months, we'll be seeing more and more effects of the recession in every aspect of our daily lives. Here's some of what you can expect:

Automobiles -- American cars will now be replaced with cuter, cheaper, more fuel efficient foreign models.

Spouses -- American spouses will now be replaced with cuter, cheaper, more fuel efficient foreign models.

Weddings -- Fabulous nuptials will be scaled-back; no more huge feasts with carving stations and sushi bars and cotton candy martinis. Let them eat cake!

Cakes -- The cake industry isn't getting a bailout! Buttercream and fondant will be replaced by that canned frosting crap and sheets of construction paper.

Food -- A peanut butter and jelly sandwich that doesn't give you salmonella is now considered a lavish meal.

Paychecks -- Executives of companies receiving bailouts will have their pay capped at $500,000. Most of that money will go toward their extravagant lifestyles, but the rest will go right to offshore accounts in the Caymans. The rest of us will, on the whole, have our pay cut. The money we don't pay in taxes will go toward gasoline and salmonella-free peanut butter.

Houses -- Please feel free to trade in your ridiculous adjustable rate mortgage for a cardboard box. Cardboard boxes can be obtained for no money down, and no money ever.

Entertainment -- Because those digital converter boxes will be a long time coming, I suggest that you check out a book about Euchre from your local library.

The Internet -- Scammers will no longer be looking for your worthless bank account numbers. Take care to guard your precious bodily fluids while online.

CNN -- Anderson Cooper won't stop using Kiehl's products, but he'll use a little bit less.

Awards shows -- Award statuettes will be made of brass. Swag bags will contain canned food and drugstore toiletries.

MTV -- Kids on "My Super Sweet 16" will only receive one car for their birthdays, instead of two.

Rap songs -- Lyrics will reference Andre sparkling wine and unattainable female acquaintances.

Electronics -- The boom box is making a comeback. Dig out your old mix tapes. And boom boxes.

Fashion -- Trends to watch out for: burlap; galoshes.

Shopping -- Go ahead and put that shelf for your cardboard box on layaway. Buy now, own later!

Births -- To save money, drugs will not be administered.

Funerals -- Natural resources are at a premium, so burial is out of the question. Everyone gets cremated during a recession, and put in a utilitarian stainless steel urn, to be kept on a shelf in your home. If your cardboard box does not come equipped with a shelf, and you don't have the one you put on layaway yet, you can leave the urn outside. Stainless steel urns are weatherproof.

What's My Motivation?

Right now, the main purpose of my writing this blog post is to avoid working at home.

I read an interesting post over at this blog, where the guy is working on a novel and journaling the process. He mentioned something about not understanding a character's motivations, and I found myself nodding along right away. One of my characters is like that. Unfortunately for me, she's the main character. I'm going to have to a) figure out why she's acting that way and, b) change her a little bit so she's less like a robot maid and more like a human being.

Sometimes I forget that the people I'm closest to are their own people. Rather, I think of them in terms of their relationship to me. I think this probably means that I'm selfish and/or self-centered, but maybe it's not just me. Are you consciously aware of the inner monologues and personal demons of the people who are closest to you? I know that my husband goes to work and school, and thinks about writing a play sometimes, and likes cigars and acting and drinking with friends. But what's really going on in there, moment by moment? What does the voice in his head sound like? What is it telling him to do, and why?

I think that's sort of what happened with Lily, my main character. Because I quickly came to regard her as a close friend, I didn't really question her actions. I trusted that she knew what was best for herself, and let her loose in her plot. But now that I'm coming up on the end of the story, I don't know why she acted the way she did. I want to believe that she had a compelling reason, and not just the one that the plot gave her.

It's tempting to say that sometimes, people just do things for "the usual no-good reason," as Douglas Adams would say. But it's not true. People think they do things for no reason, but they usually just don't know (or are denying knowledge of) their motivations. I used to peel off all the white parts of my fingernails and toenails when I was younger. My mother took me to a psychologist, who basically determined that I was odd but fine and my mother needed therapy for completely unrelated reasons. Was I an overly anxious child? Yeah, sometimes I would lie awake at night and worry that my parents would die before I learned how to cook for myself or braid my own hair. Is that why I peeled my nails? Maybe. Probably not.

I know now that I just hate having nails longer than a few millimeters. If they're too long, I can't play the violin with them, I can't type with them, I can't avail myself of as many sexual opportunities with them, and I always manage to slice into them with a good sharp kitchen knife while cooking with them. They're pretty when manicured, but otherwise, what good are they? My short nails are just as fierce under a couple of coats of black cherry polish, and they don't make me feel so utterly useless. So I cut them. Frequently.

So, here's the trick: in a first person narrative, how do I convey to the reader that there are reasons for a character's behavior that she doesn't even realize? That's kind of a rhetorical question, as I know it'll take some gentle massaging in the rewrite. She'll have to tell you things about herself that she doesn't realize she's telling you. That's always the trick.

Creativity and the fence

These days I'm employed to prevent people from writing so much about something that the very essence of that thing is lost. But it turns out that I've been doing the same thing. I've been writing on and on at length about creativity, and in doing so, I've completely lost track of what it actually is.

Creation is the act of bringing into existence something that did not previously exist. Usually, you see creativity most often in the arena of problem solving. A problem is a roadblock, and a solution is a way around it. If the roadblock is a tall, electrified, barbed wire fence; and the gates on either side of it are locked; and the sides of the road are sheer vertical rock faces, then the solution is going to have to be creative. Necessity, as the saying goes, is the mother of invention.

Often, in life, you will come up on a problem like the barbed wire fence, and someone on the other side will tell you: "Hey! Slip me ten bucks and I'll give you the access card." If you swipe the access card, the electricity goes off for sixty seconds and the gates open up. It's--you got it--the easy way out. It costs you even more than the $10, though. Every time you take the easy way out, you lose a little bit of the drive and passion that once pushed you into getting shocked and cut in pursuit of your own way over the fence.

But here's something to think about: the guy who sold you the access card. How did HE get over the fence? And, more importantly, what's his motivation for keeping you from getting over the fence your own way? This blogger had a couple of ideas about that. It's fairly obvious, really. The guy on the other side stands to profit if you don't want to go through the trouble of figuring out a way over the fence. Not only that, but he retains his power over you. If, however, you make it over by yourself, you can stand there and either a) sell access cards for $5 and undercut his business or b) tell others of his nefarious scheme. Either way, his own creativity (the way he got over the fence) goes unrewarded. The major downside to this is that we never find out if your creative solution over the fence was the same as his: it's an innovation blocker.

Thankfully, creativity doesn't always have to occur in the service of a solution. Some of the most interesting stories and poems that I've read do little more than highlight and explore a problem. If I approached the fence, climbed it, and, blistered and bloody, ultimately refused the indignity of paying for the access card, leaving my body to die a slow and painful death on my side of the fence, that could be an excellent story. But there is little to no reward in life for someone who merely reiterates a problem, even if it's done in an interesting way. That's one reason why it's so hard to write a good, lasting story. You have to balance your self-indulgent exploration with the value to society that you might be able to offer.

Fiction writers: how do you balance your thoughtful self-indulgence with the value you want to present to society? How do you find your big picture issues? Do you start with issues and come to the story, or does the story ultimately dictate its own issues?

I find that getting shocked and bloodied trying to find my own way over the fence is sometimes its own reward, but sometimes I'm curious about the other side.

Weighing in on Elizabeth Alexander's Inauguration Poem

While I lay here, recovering from a bout of InaugurationSARS, I figure that I should probably record my two cents on the poetry that attempted to kick-start this historic presidency. I should comment on the poetry (and the poet) chosen to commemorate what was, no doubt, one of the biggest days in America's lifelong struggle with political, racial, and social identity.

What you may not know about me is that in my other life, when not scribbling down scraps of fiction, working on my novel, or just plain working for a living, I'm a poetry scholar. If I'd continued with my graduate school journey, I probably would have ended up writing my dissertation on some topic in 21st century American poetry/poetics.

To add to that, I was there to hear this thing (hence the InaugurationSARS). Here are my photos.

As a result, I feel uniquely qualified to comment on this poem (transcript courtesy of the New York Times).

Here's the deal, folks: it was terrible.

The Guardian's books blog characterized the poem as "too prosy" but that's not the real problem with it. That same blog suggested that Alexander's idea of using African praise song form was a good one, but that she lacked follow-through. That's getting closer to the crux of the problem.

The biggest problem with this poem, in my humble opinion, was that the poem completely lacked lyricism. She must not have fully understood the magnitude of her task: not only was she setting the tone for a historic presidency on an amazing day, but she was also supposed to set the tone for Obama's continuing engagement with the fine arts as a person and as President. Whoops. Not much art went into the writing of that poem. It's like she didn't read it aloud to herself while she was writing it, and the first time it was ever spoken was on the 20th.

The poem's title "Praise Song for the Day" would have been great, for a poem that was actually about The Day, or for something that actually resembled a praise song, in form. Check out the example of praise song that the Encyclopedia Britannica gives.

When I read this, I see nobility, power, beauty. Even in translation, this praise song has a lyricism to it (no doubt a credit to the translator's skill). There is music in the words, and the praise soars so high it nearly reaches godhead. Let's see what Elizabeth Alexander wrote:

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

I don't even have to read past the first line to realize that she has it all wrong: "catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking." The line is clever, sure, but what does it really mean? It means, of course, that we make the noise that is around us. That we don't ever truly listen. Is that really what she wants to say to us at a moment when we have just devoured the words of our new President as though we'd been starving for wisdom? Yikes.

"Someone is[...] repairing the things in need of repair." Oh, really? So it's all taken care of? Great! What did we want this Obama guy to do, again? I know she was trying to raise our consciousness about the importance of the little things, the simple things. By raising our consciousness, she hoped to glorify those small acts. That's why she chose the uniform, and the tire. These things have connotations: service, utility. I'm certain that's what she was going for. It was a nice try, but who, standing on the mall or glued to their CNN, was really going to take that extra step? Also, why is there no music here?

Of course, there's no music here because someone is trying to make it somewhere else, with an eclectic collection of instruments, and is apparently failing miserably at it. The list of instruments itself has no music. It almost hurt to hear her awkwardly rattle them off: "a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice." Look at the syllables of the last four instruments: 2, 2, 4, 1. The consonants are unyielding and there's no rhythm to the words. I'm sure she considered her choice of items carefully, but it's clear that she didn't think about the words at all.

I can barely even describe how infuriating the next bit is, to me. It's everything that everyone who hates poetry hates about poetry. She thinks she is doing the world a service by elevating the mundane, but it comes off as nothing more than a laundry list of observations. There is absolutely nothing in the text (nor was there anything in her delivery) that signals that these were simple acts made glorious. Below, I will link you to a poem in which the poet glorifies a trip to the coffee shop, even while contrasting it with the wonders of a trip abroad. It's possible to do exactly what Elizabeth Alexander wanted to do--just, not like this.

"We encounter each other in words," to your detriment, Ms. Alexander. She later goes on to say that in the sparkle of the day, anything is possible, and that we walk forward to see what lies ahead, which as far as I can tell is just a brief paraphrase of every stump speech Obama gave during his campaign. She also throws in something about "figuring it out at kitchen tables," which I can only assume is her one-line homage to Joe Biden's stump speeches.

Combined with Alexander's lackluster delivery, this poem was quite clearly a clunker. If it had been a car, I wouldn't have been able to drive it off the lot without something crucial falling off of it.

It's a damn shame that Gwendolyn Brooks did not survive to write this poem, because I know she would have known exactly how to do it.

President Obama managed to get superstars to cover every other aspect of his Inaugural festivities, especially the music: Aretha Franklin, Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman. Why not a superstar of poetry? And, if the idea was to accentuate the glory of the mundane, why not choose a superstar poet whose entire oeuvre is based on that very idea? I'm thinking, of course, of former poet laureate Billy Collins. As you can see from the linked item, Billy Collins is the biggest superstar in popular poetry for good reason. This man creates the idea of home for Americans like no other poet alive today. He's not Gwendolyn Brooks, but he would have gotten the job done.

For more analysis of the poem (line by line, very thorough) please see the University Diaries blog: http://www.margaretsoltan.com/?p=8237.

Now that I've spouted off on the subject, let me know what you thought of the inaugural poem. Yea or nay?

A Blast of Writing From The Past

I Googled myself today, just for shits and giggles. Something interesting usually pops up whenever I do this, and this time was no exception. The first thing I found was the headline:

Dishonest scholar deserves punishment

Now, why would I ever have written about that? The most probable explanation is that my friend was an editor for our high school paper and desperately needed to fill some column inches on the op-ed page, way back in October 1998. (This very same friend just defended her Ph.D. thesis this morning, by the way. Congratulations, Dr. Courtney!)

When I stumbled upon the article, I couldn't imagine having written something so banal. I must have been trying to pad my journalistic portfolio or something. But as I read it, I recognized more and more of myself in it. I was most certainly a dramatic young lady, as you will see from the article, provided below:

Lon "L.T." Grammer was a model student. He had a 3.91 GPA and brilliant recommendations from his former teachers at Cuesta Community College in California. He was a perfect candidate for transfer to Yale University in the fall of 1994. So why would such a shining political science student copy a take-home exam? And why would he choose to copy an exam that was clearly no better than an F paper? These were the valid questions that led Grammer’s professors and Yale authorities to begin investigating Grammer’s character.

What they found was startling: Grammer had falsified his transcript, raising his GPA from 2.077 to 3.91, and forged the recommendations of several fictitious teachers. Grammer had also created information for his driver’s license applications in both New Hampshire and Connecticut. He is currently fighting a court battle with the town of Meriden, and another with Yale is yet to come.

However, a court case is not a strict enough punishment for this deviant from the system. Many high school seniors work themselves ragged to get into educational institutions like Yale. These honest students agree that someone who repeatedly broke the law, falsified his entire transcript and has a C- grade point average should be thrown out of the school, prosecuted to the fullest, and embarrassed thoroughly.

Grammer should be blushing already; he was caught because he cheated off of someone of near-equal academic standing. Yale should make an example of him, maybe by testifying against him in his court cases for driver’s license fraud, just to make sure he gets the punishment he deserves. Perhaps he should be sentenced to repeat twelfth grade, or maybe he should be blacklisted from the top 25 undergraduate schools in the nation. Yale should teach Grammer to work his way up from nothing by leaving him alone with the aftermath of his self-destruction.

...

"aftermath of his self-destruction" --> that's how I knew it was mine. The bit about being sentenced to repeat the twelfth grade, as I was embarking upon my own senior year experience, was a dig at high school. I was probably mad at some administrator for censoring something with genuine artistic merit (I spent a good portion of my junior and senior years that way). This flimsy opinion piece, which I probably didn't even care much about, is written such that it is able to remind me of exactly who I was at the time, even 10+ years later.

Do you ever go back and read things you've written in the past? Do they stand the test of time? Is there a voice that you recognize as "you," and has it changed in the interim?

Under pressure

Click here for 40 Inspirational Speeches in Two Minutes.

How do you get motivated to create? If it were easy, everyone would do it. Creativity is hard work, and it takes time. I started this blog because I wanted to make time for my creative work. That's the same reason why I did NaNoWriMo.

Having completed NaNoWriMo for three years running, and having worked in deadline-driven publishing environments for four years, I have determined that I work extremely well with deadlines. NaNoWriMo's deadline may be somewhat arbitrary, but it works for me.

The blog that I linked to at the top is run by this guy I went to high school with and his friends from college (he made the video!). The blog ran a contest in September/October for a movie script with strong female characters. I ended up writing what I consider to be a comic book-type movie, for the teens-and-early-twenties-comic-book-fangirl set (is that too specific? Probably!). I actually didn't finish by their deadline, and consequently, didn't submit it. However, because of the deadline, I now have more than 100 pages of screenplay to my name. That's 100 pages more than I had in August. It's amazing what a little bit of deadline pressure can do!

Do deadlines work for you? Do you set them for yourself, or do you let others set them? And if deadlines aren't your thing, what is it that drives you to create?

Happy New Year, Internet!

The secret is out: I have a giant crush on Wil Wheaton's writing. He loves it and he works hard at making a vocation of it, which I admire. A discerning reader can tell that his writing has been carefully crafted, but his voice is strong and refreshing, and he always makes sure that the reader is rewarded (usually emotionally, but sometimes intellectually as well) for the time spent reading. The truest indicator of his skill is my ability to follow his posts on gaming, a subject in which I have little to no interest.

Anyway, I'm telling you about this because a recent post of his on the demise of Ficlets has brought a couple of Internet "writing opportunities" (for lack of a better term) to my attention. A commenter there suggested that he check out quillpill, which is a Twitter-esque noveling site. When I poked the Internet a bit more, I came up with textnovel, a similar app but without the character limit. These two programs are apparently the U.S. versions of the Japanese "Magic Island," which is a platform that has allowed angsty Japanese girls with cell-phones to hit the best-seller list. According to the New Yorker article, 4 out of the top 5 literary fiction books in Japan were cell-phone novels.

Cell-phone novels! Novels written by and for the age of mobile technology! For once, I sort of don't feel as though I am behind the curve. I've updated this fiction blog from my mobile device more than once or twice. When I am riding in a car and we go past something that makes me think, that puts a phrase in my head that I can't stop hearing, I love having the ability to write it up on my BlackBerry and e-mail it straight to this blog. But I'd be curious to see one of these published cell-phone novels in person. They sound like picture-less manga, more or less. Too bad my Japanese was never very good and is rusty now, otherwise I'd try to order one.

Cell-phone noveling: is it something I should look into? Would you be interested in reading/writing that type of literature? Why or why not? And do you think it even counts as literature?

Idea Farming

I am currently collaborating with my friend Dan to write a musical. It's something we've been talking about doing for a while now, but I had to wait for the right idea to come along before I could make any progress on it. Obviously, I did plenty of other things in the meantime, including but not limited to work, sleep, other writing, and idea farming. Yes, idea farming: reading, listening, watching, and interacting with people are the ways that I sow when I want to be able to reap ideas at harvest-time.

The idea for the musical emerged when I was--of all things--listening to an old-timey variety show on the radio.

When I think about it, the conflict of the musical is that the main character has misunderstood her calling in life, and has focused on goals that are impossible for her to attain. She stumbles upon the key to her success completely unexpectedly. It happens while she is interacting with people (while wallowing in her failure). Sometimes, the very actions of idea farming are what allow you to see all the ideas that are naturally growing wild beyond the fence.

Do you do anything in particular to cultivate your ideas? Or is it more of an organic process? (Like that? I've got more wordplay where that came from!) How do you get your ideas?

Misunderstanding

My friend Kate was in a band that released a full-length album last year. The album is called "I Am Magically Happening," and if you read the liner notes, you learn that the title came from a mishearing of something else (a song lyric, I think). I thought this was a novel and/or strange creative method when I first read about it. But now, when I'm thinking about where I get my ideas, I realize that mishearings and other general misunderstandings make up a large portion of my inspiration.

Misunderstanding (and striving to correct it) is a fairly solid description of the human condition, as far as I can tell. This is why science and religion are so darn popular. And literature knows it, too. Maybe I've misunderstood, but it seems to me that many of the best stories are based entirely on misunderstandings. Gilbert and Sullivan's entire oeuvre and most of the rest of 18th century dramatic literature wouldn't exist without mistaken identity--a real plot engine that drives conflict, dramatic irony, and resolution with one pump of the gas pedal.

The other way to think about it is to say that we write because we want to understand the world better. Stories are about unusual people (or about the ways in which normal people are, after all, unusual) not just because they make for interesting reading, but because fiction writers want to stretch the limits of their understanding by exploring the unknown. The old saw, "write what you know" means something entirely different when placed next to the wisdom from the Tao Te Ching, "who knows that he does not know is the highest."

When we admit to misunderstanding the world, we admit that we are fallible. When we write to understand, we strive for improvement. Tell me about the ways in which you have misunderstood the world. Did your misunderstanding lead to great ideas?