On Writing

When I was seven I developed a terrible case of insomnia. It got so bad that my parents eventually took me to the school counselor (I doubt she had any real training as a psychologist) and she told me to make up stories to tell myself and that would help me go to sleep. This worked on and off over the years. When I reached my late forties, I realized I had a thousand stories in my head and maybe I could write some of them down. So I took some classes, some workshops and eventually was able to publish some of them.
I still have a million stories in my head. My husband only has to say something like, "My father made us all get up at seven and watch a dog on the Today Show who was supposed to be able to talk" and I'm off. I can hardly wait to begin that story and find out what happened. That's why I love writing flash pieces and very short stories. You can be onto the next one in a week or two.
Is your head filled with stories? How did it begin for you?

Rescue Me (and I mean it)

I know I should never have liked this show. It's clearly misogynistic. The main character has committed some questionable acts over its run, I admit it. My son and daugher-in-law took it off their rotation when Tommy raped his wife last year. But I've always liked Tommy's bad boy antics, thinking at heart, he's a good soul and that hasn't really changed. And I guess I'm not as easily offended by fiction.
What has changed for me is that it's become BORING. The story arc is more of a circle and we come back to the same set of issues over and over. Every sexual encounter is the same. The woman is predatory and Tommy is taken aback by her ardor. He never has to do more than lie there with his mouth open, uttering half-sentences of surprise. Tommy is heroic, Mike is slow-witted and maybe gay, Frank can't commit, Lou is funny, Janet is the world's biggest pain in the ass...tell me something new.
Come to think of it, every woman on Rescue Me is the same--irrational, crazed, predatory.

Maybe I should stop watching it. Maybe women are treated better
on Entourage, or The Sopranos, The Sopranos, Big Love, The Shield, or Mad Men. See what I mean. Oh for the days of Cagney and Lacey.

Laurel Hill Cemetery

My brother reminded me that I had been to Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philly in 2003 and he had the pictures to prove it. I do remember now eating a cheesesteak at a place near there. All of my memories of Philly revolve around cheesesteaks, the Schuykill Expressway and the Jersey Shore. Can anyone tell me why Laurel Hill is relevant to NoirCon? Was Goodis buried there?

These are my great grandparents. Thomas Morrison's father, a Welsh miner, died of black lung disease and Tom was sent to Girard College in Philly, which took in orphan children in the 19th century and gave them a fine education although their mothers had to relinguish custody.

Tom's mother was a lacemaker from Ireland. A sad story, yes, but Tom went on to Temple Law School and became the City Comptroller of Philadelphia before his death.

Thanks, Jeff for reminding me.

Halo for Satan

Anyone know anything about this guy? When my local used bookstore didn't have Goodis, they sold me this. What do you think? Imagine four warehouse floors of books and not one Goodis (or any other other mid-century noir writers.

Now That I Can Dance

Most of the time when I think about Detroit, I worry. I worry that the city will never find its way out of the morass that it sank into around 1967. I worry that Detroit will never head any list for more than its crimes and unemployment. I feel bad that it seems to be as racist as it was in 1967. I wish the Detroit Free Press was the newspaper it was thirty years ago. . I wish the car companies were doing better even though I drive a Subaru. I wish that the Detroit incinerator was not huffing its toxic air in my direction 24 hours a day.
But once in a while I feel good about Detroit. I feel good we have two Democratic Senators and a Democratic Governor, and that two of them are women. I feel good that we have three good sports teams. I feel good that we have a major symphony orchestra and a first-class art museum. I'm happy I can see indy and foreign films at four venues. We have every kind of ethnic restaurant you could name within an hour of the city. I am happy we have Aunt Agatha's Bookstore an hour away.
But today, I felt especially good as I watched thirty or so young people put on a sensational musical review for 1200 people. This was the sixth and last performance and I am so glad I caught it. The Mosaic Theater is a ray of hope for young people here, offering them the sort of opportunities that Motown purported to offer and didn't fifty years ago.
"Now That I Can Dance" was the story of the Marvelettes and Motown, one of Detroit's greatest contributions to popular culture. If any of those thirty twenty-somethings couldn't sing or dance I didn't hear or see it. And how nice to be in a multi-racial, multi-age, multi-ethnic audience in the newly restored DIA auditorium. We rocked baby, we rocked and we sailed home on a cloud of optimism.

What do you recommend?

Help me fill in some holes in my reading. What are your choices for the best Cornell Woolrich, Jim Thompson, David Goodis and Charles Willeford? Guide my reading for the months leading up to Noircon. A native Philadelphian, I have to go. Thanks.

Sex

Sometimes when I read a sex scene in a novel, I begin to think "ah, that's what sex is like for that writer." That's what he/she thinks is kinky or hot or repressed or whatever. It's my telescope at their window.
Does a depiction of sex reveal a lot about a writer or is it just as imagined as a description of anything else? Or is it perhaps based on what the writer has read in other books? Somehow I feel like a writer brings his own experience with him/her here more with sex scenes than with other issues.
My "issue" here is that I just wrote a novel about a woman obsessed with sex and yet there is very little description of such sex. I know David from my writing group is going to nail me for this as soon as he reads it. Writing about sex seems too revelatory to me. You can't help but think "oh, does she really think she invented that. Does she really think no one does that every Tuesday night."
I'd rather just shut the door like they did in movies of the forties and fifites. You know what's going on behind the door, right? I don't need to tell you.

"My Hero"

For all you Superman fans, here's a flash fiction piece on D.Z. Allen's Muzzleflash.
Flashes are so much darn fun to write. http://www.muzzleflashfiction.net/

Hey, Bryon, how about another challenge? How about one about murders taking place on planes, trains and buses?

Mourning Might Becomes Electra But Not Me

I'm in mourning for those halcyon days when I could rush to the wp each monring and find out what'd happened to my protagonist overnight. What surprises she had in store for me, what strange and dark passages she'd taken while I slept.
Though I can still spend time with her, still wonder at her seductive ways and dark charms, there's never the rush of feeling, the wonder of what might occur. I have to maintain a blueprint by now, have to stick to the plan, the plot. There's no freedom in my fingers.
As much as I resisted writing a novel, I found much to love in it.
Will I ever find another love like my first one? Will anyone else ever allow me such entry into their soul? How do you let go? Please advise.
(For those who wonder, I have not gone off the pier. I just miss my summer mission).

Television

Hey, don't go away when you see that word because it's my contention that television--the non network variety--is the new film. The kind of films that Bergman and Antonioni made are more likely to be found on series tv. At least if you're talking about depth of character and atmosphere.

I see a lot of movies, at the theater and at home, and nothing lately compares to The Wire, The Sopranos, Big Love, Rescue Me, The Shield, Deadwood, Life on Mars and more recently Mad Men.

Burn Notice, Entourage and The Closer also merit the occasional glance. Television--the non network kind--has finally seen its strength--it can give the viewer a deeper, longer view into its subject. It can be just as sophisticated as film.

Mad Men, in its first two episodes, has more to say about how women were treated circa 1960 than any movie of recent years. I remember being considered fair game for the men in my Bell Telephone Company office and that was a decade later. It's also amusing and sad to see aerosol sprays come onto the market pitched as wonder products, knowing what we know now. Not to even mention, decisions made by these ad men on how to sell cigarettes after the surgeon general's first warning.

My Netflix envelopes are sitting on the coffee table for weeks now. Maybe I'll watch them when the network shows return in a month. Maybe...

Nana blogday

Although in a sense this entry is about communication.
Yesterday Kevin learned how to clap his hands and yell "yea" at the same time. We all did it with him a hundred times. And then he discovered if he did it first, we would do it back. Communication. It was like the scene in The Miracleworker when Annie gets Helen to understand the sign for water.
Think of the complex action Kevin has learned. He can bring his hands together, he can yell the same sound each time. He do it in response or do it to evoke a response. He can reproduce the same action.
I had my children at age 22 & 23 and this sort of revelation escaped me. I was just looking for the big moves. We only had Dr. Spock to guide us. Glad I'm old enough now to appreciate the small ones now. Yeah, Kevin.

The Last Ten Pages

are upon me and I find I am very reluctant to wrap it up. In fact, I am actively avoiding it by constantly rewriting other sections of the novel.
I've come up with these reasons for my procrastination.

1) I've been in this woman's head for six months now and I don't want to let her go.
2) I fear the real work now begins in trying to find an agent, a publisher.
3) I am worried that the most important part in a crime novel, the ending, is not good enough. That the reader will be disappointed.
4) I have an alternate ending that I don't think is right for the character but is probably more splashy, more dark.
5) I'm not sure if I should leave the door open for a future novel with this character.
6) My daughter will read this now and I don't want to disappoint her. I mean, my God, would you want your writer-daughter to be disappointed that you, in fact, are not such a good writer after all.
7) I know there are things that will need to be changed, but this is a very tight book and that will be difficult.
8) I have to let my writing groups read this now and they will have lots of ideas that may make me lose confidence.
9) I think my character has changed over the course of 65,000 words. I know people change, but I am not sure I didn't soften her up unintentionally. Maybe I need to go back and darken her up.
10. I'm plain scared about what will happen next.

Do you share these sort of thoughts at the end of a project?

Reading Groups

Do you find it difficult to read an assigned book? This is my dilemma in my reading group. Usually I can blame it on the length of the book and the fact that the women tend to choose didactic books month after month. This seems to be true of most books groups. Examples: Snowflower and the Secret Fan, Nickel and Dimed, The Red Tent, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Arc of Justice. But even when I choose the book myself or even when someone chooses something I would probably like under other circumstances, I am resistant to reading it. Why? does it harken back to my misadventures as a student? Is this true for anyone else?
This month we are reading The Good German. I'm on page 72 in a 500 pages book with a few days go. Does anyone have crib notes I can use? And the movie supposedly stinks so I can't do a Leave to Beaver stunt like that.

Hairspray and the Modern Zoo

Two issues here. First, I loved Hairspray. Yes, the film traded camp for sincerity, but I adored the naive optimism that every issue could be resolved by a realization that "isms" were ruining the world.
There were a few slow spots but damn, I was tapping my feet to the songs, even if they were unmemorable. What saved the film was the idea that we were worth saving, that the U.S. was, at heart, the Great Society.
When did it all go wrong?
Also did Amanda Byrnes (or whatever) have her skin tinted so as not to appear too white for a black man? She sure was a strange color.

And what is it with modern zoos? I love the naturalistic settings but where were the animals? All of them were submerged in protective coloring. My grandson was only arrested by the motion of butterflies. Everything else was invisible. Maybe we need to paint the rocks turquoise and pink.
So odd to hear the children asking, "Mommy, where are the lions, polar bear, etc? I'm glad to see the cages gone but still... You people with children: explain.

Tomorrow I get to see Tribe and Mrs. Tribe. I am excited!!!!!!!!!

This is what happens

when you go on a vacation. You begin to rethink aspects of your novel. And suddenly it occurs to you, you should have written it in the first person. How could you have made that mistake?

Or what were you thinking setting up that plot device where the explanation of what happened will be longer than what happened? Or the whole thing is really cheesy and you should stick with the shorts. Does this happen to you? Or is it just me?

Congrats to My Darling Daughter

Who is nominated for an Anthony Award for Best Short Story for "Policy" in Damn Near Dead. "Policy" became the PBO Queenpin in 2007. Duane's Damn Near Dead is the Little Engine That Could. He put together one swell book.
And congrats to all the other nominees as well. Love the number of women nominated this year. It will be darn near impossible to award Best Novel to a man with five women up there.

The Tragedy Grows

I need to talk about this with someone. I guess it's you. The husband of the beautiful woman whose picture is a few entries below (who died last week) has now disappeared. His wallet, keys and clothes were found on a beach. He is 35 years old and was on his way to her Memorial Service in Michigan. He is also an artist and writer. How can their families bear this? Suicide is contageous, I've heard. After a long relationship, it's hard to contemplate life without a loved one.

Jeffrey Eugenides' book The Virgin Suicides (to my mind, his better book) was based on a rash of suicides in this community in the 1980s. So called motivational speakers were brought it. We begged our children not to look on suicide as either romantic or a solution. It finally ended but that was a dreadful year. This one is shaping up to be horrific too.

Name your best trait.

My writing group had a picnic on Sunday and someone whipped out a game with all kinds of difficult questions to answer. We're not into answering personal questions. Especially my husband who still hasn't told me where he grew up (only kidding, sort of). The most difficult question for both of us was--"what is your best trait?" No one else seemed to find this difficult to answer and one fellow admitted it was his superior intellect, but my husband and I were caught up. Speechless. Maybe it's the age we grew up in where admitting you had any good qualities was verboten.

Tell me your best trait and I'll tell you mine. Or I'll tell you what I said eventually. My husband never did name one so we named it for his. "Focus"

Private Fears

I saw this film last night and boy, this poster is sure misleading. There were a few comic moments but other than, pure misery. Nicely filmed though. It's from a play by Alan Ayckbourn and it feels English not French. The characters are too repressed to be French.

Speaking of private fears, do you ever worry that you are picking up the voice of a writer you are reading as you write? Or, if not the voice, the style. I think the voice is consistent in my so-called novel, but I have to say, reading Miami Purity the last few days, with Hendricks' riveting voice, was probably a mistake.

One thing is sure, her protagonist could take mine in any kind of contest you name. And I don't have the guts to name some of them.
Probably most of your guys too. Made me realize my girl isn't so dark after all.

I have 60,000 K and I guess I can begin to wind down. What do you think? Is 65 K enough?

Conversations

What is your preference/thoughts on when a long conversation takes place in a novel. A conversation where necessary information is given. Like a police interview or the protagonist explaining the action to her boyfriend. Do you prefer almost no interruptions? By this I mean things like:
She got up and cleared the table as she listened. He cleared his throat and continued. The phone rang but she didn't bother to answer it. They both listened to the sink dripping in the other room.
Obviously in a long conversation, there needs to be some of this. But do you think it should be kept to a minimum or do you find long conversations tedious and need breaks.
Thanks for the help.