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On Writing a Novel


I am currently zipping through Stephen King’s book about writing called On Writing. There are two things that make this unusual. The first being that I am zipping through it. Reading anything longer than a news paper article is rare for me these days. If a story runs more than two pages in Oprah:The Magazine, I shudder and steel myself for mental exertion. The second reason my reading of King’s book is unusual is that I generally speaking don’t care how other writers go about the business of writing. Perhaps I should, but I don’t. I write. Sometimes I share it. I like positive feedback. I am annoyed by constructive criticism but once I get past the annoyed part I do take it to heart and use the constructive parts. The reason it annoys me though is because it is rarely information I didn’t already know. I know when my writing isn’t working and having it pointed out to me just makes me crankier than I probably already was. But, I am enjoying the King book. It isn’t really about the process as much as it is about his journey and we all have our own journeys to make as writers. I found what he had to say about the writing of Carrie to be particularly interesting. He said it wasn’t a story that he connected with and that it was hard to write, but he thought it taught him a lot. Among other things it taught him that a writer should quit just because a piece was difficult emotionally or imaginatively. “Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work when all it feels like is that you’re managing to shovel shit from a sitting position.” – (p.78 of On Writing by Stephen King).

I kinda feel like that right now with my novel. It has changed direction and style and format to the point where I think I will need to start again. Not toss what I have, but start at the beginning and work my way through to what is passing as the end right now. That is 223 pages worth of reading and revising and thinking and being frustrated. Because I am.

Rob printed off a copy of it for me at his office at work because we don’t have the printer set up in our home office yet. I have been pestering him for a printer since September because I really don’t like having him print things for me at work. Not because I am one of those people who worries overly about things like using the employer’s office supplies for personal business, and I know this makes me a terrible person in some circles, The reason I don’t want Rob printing things is because he will read them, and they are not ready to be read until I say they are ready and even then they might need more work in my opinion. So Rob printed my mess of a novel and asked me where the story was going. Did I know what I wanted to say? Well no actually, thanks for asking. The thing is that I am coming around slowly to the idea that my story is not about Julie the widow but about Julie the woman who watched her husband die. It’s about me in more ways than I am comfortable with and about people I know like family, friends, the men I met online last year in my quest to date again. It’s about chaos. It’s about loneliness. It’s about pain. And it’s about how all these things go on out of sight while people appear to be managing and surviving.

Stephen King is got it about right.

Sesame Street circa 1969


I was probably not quite 6 years old when Sesame Street first aired on PBS. It was created for a specific audience, the inner-city four year old and if you look at the episodes from those first seasons you will notice a decidedly inner city setting, but one that was undoubtedly cleaner and more hopeful than the reality it was pseudo-mimicking. All I remember about the show were muppets and singing and adults who were never too busy or spoke to roughly, so imagine my surprise when I ran across an article today about the recent DVD release of those first episodes and the fact that they carry a warning sticker. Yes, you heard correctly. There is a disclaimer on these Sesame Street DVD’s cautioning parents about allowing their preschoolers to watch it. Apparently the simpler times that so many people refer to lovingly when talking about their childhood eras don’t include the years in which I was actually a child. Late 1960’s and on need not apply for “wonder years’ status after all it seems.

I was not a huge Sesame Street fan as I remember it. I preferred one of the Children’s Television Workshop’s next creations, The Electric Company a lot more. I was a devoted Captain Kangaroo fan. I can still recall the titles of some of the books he read like Mike and the Steam Shovel, Make Way for Ducklings (which I just read my own daughter the other night) and Caps for Sale (which I ran across one day at Barnes and Noble and bought – for myself). Sesame Street’s mission in the earliest days was to expose disadvantaged kids to the idea of life outside the city and instill in them the idea that learning was fun. While the teacher in me cringes at the latter (learning is not always fun but it is necessary), I feel that those early episodes are probably not the politically incorrect minefield of horror and potential psychological trauma that the warning label is meant to invoke. However, I probably won’t rush out and buy it either. Mainly because I doubt that my five year old would sit and watch it for long. She is, unfortunately or not depending on your old world views, like some many of her peers in that she is accustomed to CGIish characters and settings and the frenetic pace of today’s child-oriented productions. In short, she would probably find it boring. I don’t know if this is too bad or not. Bert and Ernie were two unrelated males lived in the basement of a dingy gray concrete building who shared the same bedroom. Cookie Monster was an unrepentant carbohydrate addict. Oscar was mean and morose and in desperate need of medicating and therapy. The grown-ups on the show often approached children who did not know them and offered them food and drink. The montages of rural life didn’t scream warnings about environmental decay via the toxicity of humanity but instead showed rather bland farm scenes that seem antique even for the time period. The running theme of being kind to your neighbors and helpful and learning without the aid of technology runs at odds with today’s neighborhoods of strangers and looking out for yourself and the idea that an education is complete if it isn’t chocked full of relevancy and head-splitting excitement.

On our recent trip to B.C. to visit Rob’s mother, she hauled out a video of old home movies that Rob had transferred from 8mm years ago. They were interesting for several reasons. First they gave me an opportunity to see all the new players in my life, my in-laws, as they were when they were young. It puts much of the current dynamics at work between them into a frame of reference. The tape also allowed me to learn more about Rob. But finally, it made me realize once again how this world is really about adults. It was built by us and for us, and children are, and have always been not much more than flesh and blood versions of vanity plates and the consequences of our adult needs. And I am not saying this makes all of us bad parents or that the majority of us don’t love our children. While I will never be totally convinced that everyone has the right to be a parent (the right, not the physical ability to breed), I think most of us are conscientious about our responsibilities. I do believe though that in our current efforts to child-proof the world, we are forgetting that children today are not more fragile than we ourselves were back in 1969. That glimpse into the inner city probably did me as much good as the pastoral scenes did those tenement dwelling preschoolers. Which is to say, a lot and that allowing our little ones today those same peeks into the past will probably not have much different of an impact.

Raising the Gas Tax


The Iowa Legislature is considering applying an additional 4 cents on the state’s gas tax. The reason for this is to raise additional funds for road projects. Predictably this has angered people and brought out the usual outraged responses such as this tax: 1) gouges consumers in the same manner as oil companies do; 2) hurts the lower socio-economic classes and 3) t won’t stop global warming anyway.

Taxes generally outrage people almost as a matter of principle. The citizenery of this country (or any country really) expect, demand even, a lot of services from their government and somehow think this should be accomplished with as little monetrary contribution from them as possible. I am not going to argue the fact that governments can and do waste resources and that includes tax dollars, but many big businesses have the same problem when there are so many divisions and people that even the most vigilant system cannot always keep track of the left and the right hand’s actions at the same time. Governments are imperfect because they are run by imperfect people who not coincidently are elected by imperfect people. But that is a debate for another day. Today we have people mad because they don’t want to pay another 4 cents per gallon of gas despite the fact that gas here is cheaper than nearly anywhere else on the planet and per person, we use more than our worldly fair share. Americans are spoiled.

But let’s look at the arguments I have seen against raising the tax. The first one was that the oil companies gouge us and then the state joins the party. My husband has spent many hours explaining the ins and outs of gasoline prices to me. He spent time in the oil business at the refinery end, so he has a fairly good grasp of supply/demand and market theory. Basically gas prices based on supply and demand. In the U.S., or any car dependent society, cars are not luxuries for the majority of people. Our penchant for sprawling communities and cities means that few of us live, work and shop within walking distance of our homes. Even with the limited mass transit systems that most people are accustomed to outside of the very large cites (which might have better and more adequate systems), we still need individual vehicles to get to the places we need to go. So, there is always demand which ebbs and flows based on seasons and holidays and on our ability to buy. When prices get too high, people cut back and prices come down again. And yes, I know this doesn’t effect the tax which remains the same. The tax is a separate issue. Gas taxes are used to maitain and build new roads primarily. I wonder if anyone else sees the irony in Iowa raising more money for more roads? The state has an abundance of roads including a veritable surplus of 4 lane highways that are near empty and go nowhere the majority of the state’s inhabitants need to go. Where I live in western Canada, people talk about the new bypass (the only one actually) that scoots by the Alberta capital of Edmonton, as though it were some fabulous breakthrough in travel. They number highways up here in the single digits and even though they live in the heart of oil country (much of which gets sent to the U.S.), they pay prices at the pump which make a 4 cent state tax look laughable.

But what about the poor? Well, what about them? They are hit hard by every use tax there is and no one seems to mind unless we are talking about gasoline. When that happens the poor become wonderful arguments in our war to not have to find ways to reduce our own comsumption. The poor are handy like that.

And finally, the idea that global warming can’t be stopped by the reductions in comsumption. I agree with that but only because global warming can’t be stopped now at all. We are no longer in the “cause” phase of global warming but the “effect” stage where the best we can hope for is to manage as many of the awful things that are here and are coming. I don’t agree with idea that reduce our consumption is a waste of time or that the upper classes are such hedonists that rising prices don’t cause them to change their driving habits at some point.

The Chevy Malibu I owned before leaving Iowa held about 14 gallons of gas, according to my husband, and an additional 4 cents per gallon is about 56 cents. I watched my students at Hoover High School spend ten times that much money in the snack machines alone on a daily basis. I spent more than that at the Starbuck’s on my way to work and most people throw away far more money on their junk food habits or weekend Target fixes. What’s interesting to me is that we readily dispose of our cash on the non-essentials without so much as first thought, but when it comes to gas for the car, we cry foul whenever the price goes up a few pennies or the government requires more payment for services.