Ants and Fiction

/ Lisa / 6 Comments

I told my husband and friend last night about my attempt to save ants.

I read a book when I was around eight about these children who were shrunk down to ant size. The red ants were after them and the black ants were the children’s friends, taking the kids in and protecting them.

I spent a long time that summer out on the street curb smashing every red ant I could find in order to help those tiny kids survive.

After the story, my husband said something that perfectly sums up the child I was (and sometimes still am).

‘You really had no concept of ‘fiction’ did you?’

Lisa 1st grade

1st Grade and the hated Shirley Temple curls

Dogs and Rules

/ Lisa / 2 Comments

Hubert Horatio Humphrey was a dachshund mix with the classic body shape and size, but with scruffy gray fur. And this long silky white hair on top of his head that I’d part down the middle and comb.

Hubert chased cars. So dad took a small board and hung it from Hubert’s collar thinking it would bang the dog’s knees and keep him from chasing things. But Hubert figured out how to run with a weird hip-swinging gait in time with the board. It didn’t slow him down at all and eventually at an advanced age, he lost a race with a garbage truck.

Brandy 4

Brandy. One of the few dogs who didn’t break rules. But knocked over Christmas trees.

Then there was Peppy Le Pew, a teacup poodle. He also didn’t like to stay in the yard but his thing was visiting. Our house had huge windows along the back of the house. Dad put chicken wire up around the outside of one of the windows. We could simply open the window and put Peppy out into his little yard, fenced six feet high.

Peppy climbed the chicken wire.

After all, aren’t rules made for breaking and boundaries made for crossing? Or at least challenging?

Vaila in bed

Vaila, who wasn’t supposed to be on the bed.

They are in writing, as long as you purposely break rules for a reason that improves the whole. If you understand the rules, you know how to revise them or ignore them as a specific story requires. But it’s something you have to be cautious of because readers have an expectation and if you don’t live up to that, they may simply move on.

The Longmire series by Craig Johnson comes immediately to mind. A typical dialog rule is that each speaker has a separate paragraph so it’s clear who’s speaking. But Johnson combines multiple speakers in one paragraph, sometimes with no dialog tag to help a reader follow the conversation. A lot of readers like this, obviously, but how many others have walked away? I know I did. That device took me out of the story.

It’s always a gamble to break a rule. It’s especially risky for a new author.

But hey, that’s also a rule that can be broken. If the story and characters are strong enough and vivid enough, even that rule about new writers can be ignored.

Then there was our dog, Sorka. Fences, windows, doors, cables, and crates were all boundaries to be broken. Rules that involved words like ‘sit’, ‘I said sit!’, ‘come’, ‘come back here right now’, ‘COME BACK HERE YOU F***ING DOG!’ were ignored. Breaking the record for how long a dog and its owners had to work with a canine behavioral therapist was something to strive for in her world. Two years, in case you’re wondering.

Sorka

Sorka in a rare holding-still moment.

It’s one thing to break a few rules. It’s another entirely to excel at breaking every single one.

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And then there are cats…for whom rules simply do not apply.

Pipe Dreams

/ Lisa / 9 Comments

There was this Christmas when I knew I was getting an organ. I’d opened the hall closet one day and there was a box that was clearly an organ. This was back in the 1970s before electronic keyboards or digital instruments.

Did I know how to play an organ? Nope. Did I want one that fit in a small cardboard box tucked under coats in a closet? Nope. I dreamed of a giant pipe organ along one wall of the bedroom I shared with my sister.

I’ve never been one who wanted to peek at presents or know ahead of time. I’ve never liked having to give people ideas, or make lists. Being surprised is part of the magic. But husbands, and parents, seem to want a list.

When we were young, that meant the Sears Roebuck Christmas catalog. It was big and heavy and came in the mail with glorious color photos of every toy imaginable. Us kids would pore over the dreams, marking up pages and folding corners.

So there I was, accidentally knowing about the organ ahead of time. I had guilt the weeks leading up to Christmas. I worried that my knowing would ruin the joy for my parents, being able to give me something I’d marked. It’s not like they could often afford the things all us kids dreamed about.

When it came time to open gifts, I ripped into that cardboard box, squealing, jumping up and down, everything I could think of to prove how much I loved it and how little I knew I was getting it. That became a family story for years after. ‘Yes, so and so sure loved their gift, but nothing like how excited Lisa was with that organ!’ No one ever suspected.

Really, it was an awful organ. A little thing that sat on the desk and sounded wheezy and tinny. I found an old book of American folk songs and picked the few easy tunes out. I attempted The Minstrel Boy, Clementine, and Shenandoah over and over. No matter how bad the music sounded, I owed it to my parents to prove to them how much I loved their gift. Mom used to come down the hallway, apologize, and shut my bedroom door.

I remember being relieved when the thing finally wheezed its last note and died.

It took years.

What gift stands out in your memory?