writing skills/profession

Lisa Parker lived close to the heart


Like most WordPress bloggers (or any blogger really) I am fascinated by the searches that people do that lead them to by blog. Probably the search term that comes up most often here is the name Lisa Parker. I first wrote about her in a piece called Going to the Movies. Rob and I had taken in the Viggio Mortensen film, Eastern Promises. Parker was the production unit manager for the film and it was dedicated to her, which is not uncommon in the movie industry when a member of the cast of crew dies during its production. Being me, I googled her at the first opportunity only to find that while her body of work is well-documented, there was little to no personal information to be found. That was frustrating to me at the time but now I find it quite fascinating. The public has this image of those in the movie world being eager for recognition to the point that any and all things about them are fair game and here comes Lisa Parker. A film is dedicated to her memory. A good film. And there is nothing to be gleaned about her save the work she left behind. How about that? Being remembered for your accomplishments only and not your dress size or tumultuous personal life.

I have searched and searched, in vain mostly, for more information on Ms. Parker. I haven’t uncovered much. She was just 39 when she died on June 4, 2007 at Charing Crossing Hospital after a brief illness. She was well-known in the Irish film industry and had worked on international films as well in many capacities. Her funeral was held shortly after her death in London with another memorial service in Dublin, Ireland the following fall. She was survived by her mother, sister and many friends. Donations were asked to be given to the Battersea Dog Home.

The second tim I wrote about Lisa Parker was in a piece about search terms. I thought it an odd memorial to her that people would find in the original blog piece that often brings them here. One of her obituaries carries the quote “she lives life close to the heart”. What a beautiful thing to have said about a person after he/she has gone. To me it means that she lived out her life doing what she loved and with that people who mattered most. What a lucky woman. And what better way to be remembered than as someone who followed her heart.

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.