Drunk on Writing


Over at Mommy Needs Coffee there is a Ray Bradbury quote on the header that says “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” That was me as a teen and young adult. Reality crushed me and my imagination and writing sustained me. While it has ceased to be that for me as I don’t find real life the scary place it always seemed to be, writing is still as important as air or water or food even. I can’t imagine a life without writing. Without words. But lately I feel as though I am drowning in my own words. I can’t get to the keyboard fast enough and when I do I can’t keep up with the flow of my own thoughts or the pace a which ideas for blog entries, short stories and even novels are flying at me, but nothing looks on the screen like I hear it in my mind or see it in my mind’s eye.

I took my daughter to the pool last Thursday. She loves to go swimming, and we have a very nice little indoor aquatic center in our town. It consists of a zero depth entry pool for all ages, a warming pool area that attracts parents with wee ones to pre-schoolers and a deep area for diving and such. We were in the warming pool when the life guards suddenly kicked everyone out of the zero entry section and began dumping buckets of chemicals in and hauling out the pool “toys” to hose them down in a way that reminded me of Meryl Streep in Silkwood. Someone had vomited. And instead of reacting with the common sense I know I possess and vacating the pool (because it is indoors the normal level of chlorine is just at maximum tolerance for me as it is, any increase in chemicals should send my asthmatic self running for fresh air), I began creating a story. A horror-ish  sci-fi thing that by the time I got us home was a companion piece for the inter-related shorts I am working on already. Everything becomes a blog piece or a short story idea anymore – even my latest rejection email has prompted an idea –  and when it doesn’t, I think – there’s a novel there, maybe.

Recently I was talking with a writer who found me through my blog. She is a real writer. Does it for a living. Books, magazine columnist. She’s been published, and it doesn’t get anymore real than that. In a follow-up email to our conversation, she wrote something that finally brought a problem I have been having with the novel I wrote last November for NaNoWriMo clear to me. It needs to be non-fiction. The novel I have is essentially a fictionalized account of me in widowhood and a bit about Will’s illness and death. For some reason I just haven’t been about to make it work, and the reason is that I have to tell it from closer up. I have to be me. Warty and decidedly non-Lifetime for Women movie-ish. I cannot be Susan Sarandonized and that makes the project so very off-putting because I so dislike the me of the caregiving and widow days. Like most people I grew up with this idea that adversity makes us noble, self-effacing and ready for sainthood. It doesn’t do that at all. Surviving and taking what you learned from hard times to make a better life and a better you does those things, if that is even possible. So if I am going to write my story it has to be my story. But it seems to me that every widow I know, or have heard of, is/has written about his/her journey, and I am just one more wanna-be (and a fairly bad widow example at that). If I do tackle it though, I know what I have to do and that is something. 

And then there are at least two novels from long ago, one done and another a few chapters done but completely outlined that I know I could finish up.

I am writing as fast as I can and can’t keep up with myself and I don’t think what I am writing is all that good. A wonderful thing? I guess it is. There was a time not long ago when I wondered if I would ever be the word machine I was as a teen when I carried a notebook with me nearly all the time like Harriet the Spy. I am almost her again. Now if I could just harness myself a bit, I might make a real writer out of me yet.

Rejection Letter from Our Stories


Finally heard back from the online magazine, Our Stories, today. It was a rejection, and I am not that surprised. Like most magazines, they see themselves, and their authors, as being “unique” but what I read was pretty run of the mill stuff. Nothing that pushed artistic envelopes and a lot of the authors were very young people, and it shows in the choices of topic and themes. However they offer to do a personal critique of all submissions and that made it worth the effort to submit. So I submitted a piece called “The White Boots” which I wrote from an anecdote that Rob told me about Shelley. It is a very short piece, but the editor at Our Stories felt it didn’t get to the point fast enough within the first two pages (not “tense” enough is how it was phrased) although he/she (Alex is kind of a gender neutral name) granted that I am good with dialogue and a good sense of language. He/she was confused by the reference I made to my main character wearing “runners” which is the Canadian term for running shoes. I make this reference early on and I guess the editor was so distracted by it, he/she never was able to get back into the story. Still it was a good exercise for me and I will go back through the story to see if I can tighten it as he/she suggested but my gut feeling is that the story is done and this person was just not the right person to read it. I have that problem myself. It was my downfall in workshopping classes because I had a hard time reading and critiquing other people’s work if I wasn’t able to connect to it (that and a lot of people fancy themselves writers and they clearly are not.)

I was issued the standard invitation to submit for a contest they are running (Matrix – my last rejection asked me to submit for their next issue. Something macabre – the sicker the better. Yeah. I’ll get right on that.) It was good to finally hear back. Now I can stop obsessing and find another possible home for this story. It’s one of my better ones, so there is a tiny bit of annoyance here, but Our Stories is really looking for angsty stuff, I think, based on what I read and is not the best home for me. C’est la vie.

The Selfishness of Smokers


My home state of Iowa is the the midst of one of the smoking ban debates. The legislature is getting ready to vote on one of the toughest bans yet and the smokers are donning their martyr suits and bemoaning the end of democracy and the pursuit of happiness again. I had to listen to yet another indignant rant from one of my smoking sisters over Easter dinner with my father “amening” in the background. Both of my sisters smoke, but my dad quit almost three years ago when he had his first stroke. Despite the fact that he now suffers from smoking induced COPD and is dying, he is still a smoker at heart. My sisters like to make themselves out to be the victims now that they are banned from smoking in my parents’ house for good. They are supposed to go outside but if it is a bit chilly or rainy or snowing, they will simply go out to the garage and smoke the air blue. Of course it seeps in to the house but not enough to bring down the wrath of either of my folks though I have complained about it often. I have asthma. Smoke does terrible things to me. I can’t even walk quickly past a group of smokers without coughing and getting congested. I try not to cough though because this invites jeers and not so under the breath comments despite the fact that I am just trying to breath and not being insulting. Smokers don’t care. They are the victims. I am wrong to want to breath?

I am led to believe by the comments to my comment at the Des Moines Register discussion that I am wrong and should just keep my non-smoking, needing to breath, asthmatic self locked up in my home so that the smokers of the world can exercise their Constitutional right to impose their habit on others. My objection is that I don’t go to places where there is very likely to be smoke and on those rare occasions I do, I suck it up – literally. But when I am trying to go to the gym or shop for groceries or just walk down Whyte Ave after a movie at the Princess, I am enveloped in smoke. Alberta has really strict indoor smoking policies which basically prohibit it entirely. As a result, smokers (and I have never lived anywhere that I have encountered so many smokers) just crowd the doorways. Mainly to be asses about it. Here they joke loudly and try to embarass when you can’t hold in a cough or try to circle wide around them. They know. They just don’t give a fuck because they willfully refuse to believe that anyone would avoid cigarrette smoke for health reasons. We are just being elitist and don’t like the smell. God, that last argument is so lame I don’t know how anyone with even a half a brain can use it with a straight face. When I was growing up, I didn’t know that smoke really stunk up your clothing. It wasn’t until I went off to college and was visiting home that I realized how awfully offensive I had smelled to people as a child and teen. As a teacher, I had many students, especially when I was on Des Moines’s east side, who just reeked of smoke. I felt terribly for them. Other kids would say rude things or beg not to sit near by. I would think about myself and my siblings and wonder if I had been that bad. I know I was. What an awful burden my dad placed on me. It was selfish of him.

I put up with my sisters and father only until my daughter was born and then I demanded that they smoke outside or we wouldn’t visit. I was a bit surprised when my dad went along and thus forced my sisters as well. He grumbled a bit, to test me I think, but I stood my ground.

Will smoked. Never indoors though or in the truck when we were traveling. He hated that he did though. Cursed himself roundly for falling into the trap. He quit with the help of a hypnotist and would have probably been done for good but the damage his illness did to his brain undid his quitting as well. I finally just arbitarily pulled the plug on his smoking when he went into the nursing home because he was nearly blind and his balance was so bad I was afraid for his safety. Even with dementia though, he continued to be a very considerate smoker. So it’s not just the addiction but the type of person one isthat causes one to be a jerk to non-smokers.