fiction

I Double Dare You

Cliff jumping in Cyprus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Feeling introspective. Probably not a good idea, but it’s where I am tonight.

I am not brave. I’ve chosen the path of least resistance more frequently than the road less traveled. I like people who are brave. I like to hear about their lives, see the photos, read the stories.

My stomach hurts just thinking about it. Risk taking is just not my thing. I have never gone cliff diving, and never will. I’ve never gone to live in another country, I don’t see that happening either. Some people live big lives, I’m not one of them. It’s true that some of those with big lives were raised in a certain way, maybe they had financial backing, or those around them assumed they would live those big lives. But not everyone. Some have an inner something that prompts them to take a leap with open eyes, even as their hearts are pounding.

I think those patterns have to be set when you’re young, and responsibilities are only to yourself. Yes, yes, we always have a responsibility to others in our lives, our community, our society. But responsibilities at 25 are different than 35, 45, or 55.

Venn Diagram for T (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Not in a woe is me, life is over with middle age kind of way. There is a point where bravery and selfishness overlap. They have to. No one would ever take a chance if they were focused solely on how the chance might harm others.

Do I live through my characters? Absolutely. When I think about it, though, my characters aren’t about big lives either. No espionage, serial killers, or royalty. I love the everyman. I love exploring what goes into the choices we make in the everyday; our relationships, and the subsequent, long range repercussions. I like to follow the path of each character, trying to establish what the question really is, forget about the answers.

So if our lives are one long game of truth or dare, I choose truth. Through a substantial veil of fiction. To make it more interesting, or more palatable? Maybe the choice isn’t truth at all, but fear.

If life had been different, and we weren’t strangling on a budget that makes the basics of getting through each day a freakin minefield, I like to think I’d be more brave. Then again, if I’d taken more risks, the road less traveled when I was younger, maybe this wouldn’t be our every day.

What about you, truth or dare?

(For Child Welfare Exhibit 1912-13.) Shooting craps, Providence, R.I. Location: Providence, Rhode Island. (LOC) (Photo credit: The Library of Congress)

And the Winner Is…

Bingo! (Photo credit: jadensmommy)

Hey Artist, Got a Dollar?

Submitted to the Reader’s Choice blog 5 minutes ago. Thanks to all who played along and cast a vote! I have wonderful friends, both online and off.

It’s 7PM on Friday of a three day weekend, woo hoo! I’m getting ready to meet Fatigue for Friday Night Madness in a little while, and I am more than ready. Ready to go be a grown up for an hour, and ready to happydance. Don’t worry, kids! I’ll limit my dance to a squirm in my seat, it’s so upsetting to the 20 somethings when they see a middle aged woman get excited. I’m lowering my cholesterol through exercise–and then I’ll raise it back up with an order of nachos. I know there’s a pint of beer waiting for me, I hope it doesn’t go flat before I get there. I’m certain it won’t be warm, because it’s about 2 degrees here in New York tonight.

Why am I happy? Because today, for the first time in a long time, I felt my rhythm while I was writing. Not just tweaking, editing, revising, not just forcing my butt to stay still and write, but really felt it. This WIP is a romance, but the setting was one I originally conceived of a few years back for a magic(al) realism short story. I’m going to try to graft the two seeds, growing them into something new for me. Will it work? I’m really not sure, but I’m very, very excited, in that way that only a woman who likes to play with characters inside her head can be.

WTF? (Photo credit: mayhem)

Disconnected

Telephone operators, 1952 (Photo credit: Seattle Municipal Archives)

Time heals all wounds, time is money, time is the longest distance between two places, time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils. Huh. Google quotes about time, and the pages go on and on. Everyone has something to say about time. Don’t waste it! Use it wisely! It’s relative! It’s a nebulous concept, distorting our already biased perceptions.

I’ve been poking around the writers’ forum. The other day, I tripped over my old username, which I hadn’t been able to remember when I rejoined, so I had created a new one. In keeping with the interests of procrastination, once I found it I ran a search for posts by the old name. The internetz, no such thing as gone for good.

Found a thread discussing looking for an agent, I had posted about receiving a request for a “full” based on a partial manuscript sent, the following day I posted about having received a request for a partial based on pages sent with a query. If you’re reading and you aren’t a writer of fiction, let me tell you, that’s a wild with joy and nerves skip around the apartment until you notice the kids are in a frightened huddle in the corner worthy couple of days. Another member posted on the thread saying I was someone to watch. Quite a compliment. The funny part? Not only don’t I remember posting any of that, I don’t remember the compliment, or the happy dance I’m sure I stomped out for at least a week.

If I had come across the post in some other way without noticing the username, I would have stopped and studied the signature, following any links to see if this person was now published, with a novel(s) available on the market. Talk about a disconnect.

I don’t wish I could go back to that time period, there were many other crappy things happening in my life that I don’t care to relive. Hey, you don’t achieve this trajectory of downward mobility if you’re skipping through the daisies each day. But I do wish I could sift the sands of that time period, find the grains that represent the writing me, and just put those grains in my pockets, so when I’m frustrated I could touch them, roll them between my fingers and against my cheek, to remind myself of the possibilities.

Lakota storyteller: painting. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Purple Prose and Heroes

Front cover of True Life Romance #3 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A fine morning here in Fringeland. I did the mama thing, then came home to take a fresh look at the story I finished yesterday. I have to tell ya, I’m not being hard on myself, there’s some major suckage in there. I corrected some glaring instant-humiliation-if-I-drop-dead-and-someone-goes-into-my-Word-files mistakes, and then closed the file. I realized two very important things. One, I meant what I’ve been saying. It’s just fine to have written a crappy story, it was an exercise in forcing myself to write again, and write fresh. I’m shocking myself with how true that feels–especially since I also spent some time lurking on the writers’ forum, reading a thread about the best short stories ever written. Two, low sodium Wheat Thins taste like crap.

I then opened the file of the romance I started a while back. I’m not sure I remembered I had three completed chapters. And you know what? I like it. And I was able to get right back into my heroine’s head. I always forget how much fun it can be to read or write a light romance. And I think this is exactly where I should be right now. So, how come I’m not writing at the moment? Oh, that pesky life thing. I have a dog to walk in an hour, and then I have to pick up Flower Child an hour after that. I’m also hoping the jackhammering going on across the street will be finished for the day by the time I sit down. With a little luck and a lot of self discipline I’ll be able to block everyone and everything out later this afternoon. I need to do a little more outlining before going further with the story.

I know some can just pick up their pencils, or open their files, and write whenever they’ve got a spare 20 or 30 minutes. I’m not that disciplined, and need at least a two hour block of time. Trust me, it isn’t a wri-tah thing for me, I can’t get into the right head to exercise either if I’ve only got 20 minutes.

In case anyone was wondering, Little Incredibly Dumb Dog is still filthy, and Big Senile Dog is back to counter surfing. He drank Husband’s coffee yesterday, and I had to drag both of them away from a smooshed rat when giving them a walk this morning. I wonder why no one writes a cookbook for roadkills of the city?

NYC Rat (Photo credit: zacklur)

The End

First draft of the short story, finished.

Confetti, Times Square (Photo credit: StuartMoreton)

I’m working on graphics, because I want the pages to have unicorns watermarked on them when printed. The unicorns will be bright blue, to make the reading of the royal purple print easier on the eyes. I’m going to ask the people here at WordPress how they made the snow appear on the blogs during the holidays, because I want glitter to positively bounce off the screen.

As you know, Bob, I was sure to describe every last detail, so my readers don’t have to get stressed out using their imagination, or trying to make personal connections. My protagonist has long golden locks, aquamarine eyes, and legs that go all the way to her slender feet. And a prettily heaving bosom. Also, she’s as pure as the driven cornfield, though sometimes her naughty bits tingle alarmingly. She sighs, whispers, pleads, and gasps, but never says. That would be boring. She does it all beseechingly, but endearingly. Nothing ever happens, and there’s no plot, so there’s no confusion when the aliens pop out of her concave belly and threaten her hero’s throbbing manhood. It’s wholesome in the way only urban and edgy can be.

Barbie_01 (Photo credit: MarinaCr)

I have Copyright in the header of every page, next to my pseudonym, Pink Peony, so no one steals my brilliance. They can do that right through the Googles these days. Now I’m going to put together an email and will cc it to every editor and agent listed in the Publisher’s Marketplace, 2003 edition. Don’t worry, I’ll let them know to act fast, before someone else signs me. My children and husband–who all loved the story, by the way–are standing by to field phone calls. Frankly, I’m surprised I even have to send it out. My words are GOLDEN! like my heroine’s hair.

So…yes. Mrs Fringe did finish the first draft of a short story. And it does have much suckage, lots of telling and not enough showing. But it has a beginning, middle, and an end. It’s a start.

Shameless Hussy

Français : La Merveilleuse Velver Grip Nouvelle Pince Jarretelle Avec Bouton en Caoutchouc (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

that’s me. But I’m trying to be

Cover of "The Hustler (Two-Disc Collector...

Cover via Amazon

of blogging and shameless self promotion of Mrs Fringe.

My promotional skills are much like my pool skills. I can rack em up with flair, but my break leaves much to be desired.

The question is this, if I suck at self promotion (I’m excellent at the shameless part, if I do say so myself), do I ipso facto suck at blogging?

I don’t think I suck at blogging, my readership continues to grow (albeit slowly), and it seems to me that’s half of blogging–writing stuff people enjoy (or find informative, but that isn’t Mrs Fringe) enough to come back and read again. It’s the other half. The networking, getting your name way out there, where I fizzle.

Blogging is, after all, a form of writing. So what makes writing success? There’s the bottom line of writers write, a leap up to writers publish, paid to publish, publishing well, multi published, best seller lists, supporting oneself (and/or one’s family) from said publications…

Mrs Fringe exists because I live life on the fringe. No money, no time, few marketable skills and a desperate need to have a spot to be truthful (in a fictionalized kinda way) about said life. However, these same factors make it very difficult to do the work necessary to bring Mrs Fringe up to the next level.

Perhaps I’ll stick to being a hussy.

Hip flask tucked into a garter belt during Prohibition (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

And, Have an Orgasm!

Atomic Housewife. 19/52 (Photo credit: Sarahnaut)

Does anyone else know/remember that old joke, poking fun at Women’s Lib? Something like this: Before women’s lib, a woman would get up, make coffee and breakfast for husband and children, make lunches for them to take with them, iron, see them off, clean the house, do laundry, grocery shop, make dinner, supervise homework, feed everyone dinner, kids off to bed, sex with husband. After women’s lib, a woman has to get up, make coffee and breakfast for husband and children, make lunches for them to take with them, iron, see them off, go out to work, come home and clean the house, do laundry, grocery shop, make dinner, supervise homework, feed everyone dinner, kids off to bed, sex with husband, AND have an orgasm.

Mmm hmm, very liberating indeed.

Is life better for the average woman than it used to be? I think so. There are more choices, more acknowledgement of compromises–hey, I can now be a feminist and still shave my underarms.

Underarm Hair (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There are women who choose not to have children, women who choose to have children and stay home, women who choose not to define themselves by their marital or maternal status at all. Still far from true social justice, because these choices aren’t accepted without question, but analyzed, judged, and whispered about. Being a woman who is a mom, I’m going to focus on that choice.

I don’t know who first coined the term Supermom, or exactly how long it’s been around, but I think it’s fair to say easily 20 years. Conservatively, 20 years. Twenty years of cartoons, jokes, analyzing, and disclaimers. We know better. Supermom is bullshit. Every bit the work of fiction that Superman is. So how come we’re still weighing ourselves against this curvy little lie?

No one human being can fill all roles, be all things to all people. Not even the little people we bring into our lives, or the one person we vow to stay with forever (whether or not forever ends after 7 years or 37). We all wear many hats, juggle different roles and obligations–true for men as well as women. But somehow, we women expect and are often expected to do just that. Especially those of us who have limited budgets, so hiring others to take care of some of those roles isn’t an option.

Even little things. Like unexpected company. I am not a fabulous housekeeper. I’d like to be, but ultimately, once we get beyond the basics of a reasonably clean bathroom and kitchen, it just isn’t that high on my list of priorities. We’re in a small space. There just isn’t a place for everything. But, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to do some extra cleaning and organizing if company is coming. I don’t like surprise guests for this reason. What does this have to do with feminism and supermoms? Well, let’s face it, no one is going to leave my messy apartment and whisper to her girlfriend, “Wow, that Husband is a pig. When was the last time he dusted?” No, the judgement would be more like, “Ugh, did you see that laundry hamper? I wonder when Mrs Fringe last found her way to the laundry room.”

If a mother works outside the home, somehow she’s still magically supposed to take care of all the hearth and home stuff, and be awake, alert, competent, and presentable on the job. And her kids are never supposed to get sick, or have any other needs that would involve taking time off. If a mother is a SAHM, she isn’t supposed to just take care of hearth and home, she had better be Supermom squared, to compensate for her lack of brain cells…err…value…err…income. She’s supposed to do it all perfectly, naturally, organic dinners that are gastronomic delights to children and adults alike, sandwiches on bread baked that morning, tastefully decorated home, never a stray sock left behind on laundry day, homemade and prizewinning Halloween costumes, and of course, oodles of time to volunteer at the children’s schools. Because, yanno, if you’re a SAHM, what do you do all day? You must be bored. *Do not confuse intellectual boredom with free time* Only, if you are bored, don’t ever say it out loud, because well, you could get a job and really do something. Never mind the mind numbing fatigue, and the fact you spend every single day being looked down upon and devalued, and there’s no such thing as a day off or quitting time.

So no, I’m not Supermom, and I don’t know one woman who is. Those who come closest are those whose annual income allows for quality, long term nannies/babysitters, full time housekeepers, and spouses who are also big earners and highly educated–socially progressive. We all know this, all make fun of the term, we judge ourselves and judge each other–but we all still beat ourselves up for not being this fictional character.

Delany wrote issue#203 of Wonder Woman, the women’s lib issue (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Telling Stories

Quiet Please (Photo credit: bixentro)

Do you ever just feel quiet? For someone who has too much to say most of the time, I go through periods (a few days or a few weeks) where I need to be quiet. Minimal phone, internet, writing, talking. Just quiet. Often, these quiet spells precede a productive writing time, so if I don’t let it morph into self indulgent and mopey, I’ve become ok with this side of myself.

When I’m done being quiet, I want stories. I like hearing them, telling them, watching them on tv. I loved the way my grandma called the daytime soaps “stories.” Not too many soaps left anymore. I think about the soap stars I used to pass on the street regularly when I was picking Man Child up from elementary school, and they’d be on their way home from work. What are they doing now? It seems like the Housewives franchise has taken over the soap slots. Not in time period, but in the need they fill for the viewer. Bad behavior, some over the top Mrs Thurston Howell III accents, weddings, divorces, torrid love affairs, fabulous clothes….Fun. I enjoy them without reservation, and yes, I’m rooting for Theresa.

AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA) benefit, Los Angeles- Sept. 1990- She played Mrs. Howell on Gilligan’s Island (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I woke up today thinking about a short story I wrote years ago. More than thinking about it, I had to find it, print it, hold it in my hands, read it, and begin tearing it apart and reconstructing. I’ve lost and discarded plenty of writing over the years; poetry, stories, aborted attempts and poor execution. Some I saved because they represent something I may want to revisit later, or have a line or description I like, if nothing else. I knew I had to have this one somewhere. Two file drawers and three flash drives later (Hey Nerd Child, I found your flash drive!), I located it. I suspect I flipped past it earlier in the day, but since the working title is “Title Here” (clever, hmm?), I probably clicked right on past. I suck at titles, always leave them for last, sometimes only bothering if and when I’m going to submit a piece.

This story, I like the opening. Where the opening leads, oof! Lucky for me, there’s plenty of little edits and corrections to make while I decide where it should go, how to reshape. I enjoy those little edits, slashing all those extra “thats” and ugly adverbs. These give me time and head space to really think about what I’m saying and why. Is it necessary? Of course, here lies the danger of self editing and reflection, how quickly the questioning of a word, phrase, or scene can turn to questioning the necessity of the story.

Why do I do this? I think it’s a mental detour, to see if I really need and want to finish the work. Maybe I’m not sure I’m sponge worthy. Cause what else would pop into my head other than a show that was scripted to be about absolutely nothing–certainly no necessary moral story– that was absolutely brilliant? Because fiction tells our stories. All of them, and all of us.

red pen (Photo credit: Mad African!: (Broken Sword))

(Wo)Man Behind The Curtain

Veiled Turkish Woman (1878) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Recently I’ve had a couple of excellent conversations about writing , and a couple more specifically looking at the border between truth and fiction.

Pablo Picasso said art is the lie that tells the truth. Sounds right to me. Sounds true to a lot of writers. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least two books on writing that have a spinoff of that phrase in the title.

If the goal of fiction is to have the reader suspend disbelief, there has to be enough the reader can understand and relate to in order to do so. In walks truth. How much? That’s the $60 question, isn’t it? Personally, I think that’s where the lesson from Greek dramas walks in, it’s all about moderation. Enough reality to make the work relatable, enough fiction to make it an enjoyable read.

Unless, of course, you’re writing a roman a clef (a tell all, a “novel” that shares actual people or events overlaid with a thin veil of fiction). Most of these are interesting only because the protagonist or main event is extraordinary. I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of any event or time period in my life that was so exciting, I could carry a reader through four or five hundred manuscript pages with my daily happenings. Certainly not more than one manuscript, and as a writer, I don’t want to stop at one.

Popcorn (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I was a kid and went to the movies, I would get a popcorn, heavily salted, and a box of Sno-Caps (nonpareils). I would proceed to dump the chocolates into the popcorn, and shake them up. I think writing is that treat. Popcorn is the kernels of truth, chocolate the fiction. Closing your eyes and taking a handful of fiction, mostly chocolate, with varying bursts of salted corn breaking through. Enough to enrich the experience, but not so much that the reader risks cracking a tooth on an unpopped kernel. Blogging, for me, is the opposite; mostly popcorn, just enough chocolate sprinkled in to make it interesting to someone besides myself. Yanno, all six of my readers.

I think this is the real difference between genre fiction, mainstream or contemporary, and literary fiction. Genre having the most chocolate, the balance shifting as you get into longer and or headier novels.

Our tastes change as we age and mature, tastes change with different eras. Classics are classics because there’s enough truth within them to be timeless, but the fiction they’re dressed in might not be accepted in today’s market. Or tomorrow’s.

I wonder what Ernest Hemingway would make of The Real Housewives. How thick do you like your veil of fiction; gauze, lace, brocade?

It takes a huge loom and two people running it to weave these fabric patterns. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brocade (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Make Up Yer Mind, Lady!

Isaac Asimov Hails a Cab (Photo credit: zzazazz)

It’s said that Isaac Asimov would work on several manuscripts at once, leaving different typewriters set up around his apartment, and when he got stuck or tired of working on one, he would get up and switch to a different typewriter, different manuscript. True? I don’t know, but it does make for great writers’ folklore.

I am no Isaac Asimov. In fact, for someone with such a rich fantasy life I feel the need to write it down, I’m shockingly linear. No, I’m not one of those writers with a spreadsheet and 135 page outline before I begin the first draft, but I do start at the beginning. After the first scene I write the second scene, and so on. Sure I go back and edit; change things, delete things, add a layer throughout the manuscript, but I have never written an entire scene or chapter with the idea of “I’ll know where it goes/decide where it belongs later on.” Maybe it’s a product of not working from a detailed outline, what I write today determines what I write tomorrow, and I can only work on one project at a time. The exception is this blog. Yes, it’s writing, works the fine motor skills and powers of description, but apart from moments of creative license (mostly to protect the innocent), it isn’t what I think of when I feel that flash of panic and excitement looking at the blinking cursor.

The one way my writing doesn’t follow the straight and narrow path is genre. I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. I write short lit fic pieces, shorter than the average short story but not short shorts. I write full length manuscripts that are somewhere between lit fic and women’s fiction (so, mainstream?). And I write romance. “Write the book of your heart!” Well, my heart is fickle. I enjoy writing all three.

Description unavailable (Photo credit: dno1967b)

Yeah yeah, insert heaving bosom and throbbing manhood cracks here. True, the cover art isn’t much better than it used to be, and the titles haven’t changed with the times, but the content has. Romance has always and will always equal a happy ending, but how you get there reflects the times. And the publishing house. There’s something fun, something…satisfying in writing within the closer boundaries and confines of romance.

You know how there are some people in your life where when, how, and the time period you met them in have as much to do with the development of your relationship as who they are? The characters who begin to take shape in my mind, filling in and fleshing out as they “walk around” and interact other characters, are much like those real life relationships. I’m all about characters, but some make sense in a short story, some in a romance, while others belong in longer mainstream manuscripts.

I don’t switch from one to the other in the same day, week, or month, but I do have two partial manuscripts right now; one romance, the other my as yet undefined for the shelves hybrid. I feel ready to get back to one of them, but I’m not sure which one. This is the first time I’ve been faced with this, I’ve always known when it was time for me to work in each genre. Maybe I’m just procrastinating, throwing up a mental road block so I don’t get back to work. The hybrid needs some serious revisions, tearing apart and reconstructing before I can go forward. Freaking out my little linear mind.

Whatever the reason is, I don’t like it. I have periods where I write, and periods where I don’t, but this feeling of being stuck is less productive than either one. Do you stick to one genre when you’re reading? How about my writing readers? Are you a circular writer or linear? One genre or multiple?