Birds and Other Apocalypse Tales

/ Lisa / 3 Comments

Remember Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds? I believe I was about nine when I saw it. Afterwards I decided I could keep my siblings alive in our half-bathroom. There were no windows, I could stuff towels under the door, we’d have water to drink, and most important of all, a toilet. Of course the five of us would have had to stand in the cramped space the whole time. I believe I pictured myself, as the one who saved their lives, getting to sit on the throne.

Birds from Wikicommons

Birds from Wikicommons

Then there was the nuclear bomb. Or the atomic bomb. I don’t remember which. Either way, I was going to make the siblings crawl under the house because for some reason I thought we’d be safe there. An alternate plan was to get to my friend’s house. They had a real bomb shelter, stocked with canned goods. No can opener though, as they discovered years later when dismantling the shelter.

Next came volcanoes. Anyone remember being shown, in school, a film about a Mexican farmer who had a volcano appear in his back yard? I believe I was around twelve for that one. I don’t remember my plan to save the siblings from volcanoes other than an attempt to get my dad to teach me to drive.

From Wikicommons images

From Wikicommons images

Then came the Chernobyl disaster and I was right back to planning for radiation. But by then I was living off grid with my parents – generating our own power, in the woods (hunting possibilities), near a river (water supply) and with an outhouse (remember the importance of the toilet and the birds?). We were set.

wikicommons images

wikicommons images

Each generation has an apocalypse fear. I read a study that said the shape an apocalypse takes for each age is a reflection on the stresses and fears for that generation. Zombies? That we were becoming drones.

So what is it these days that I’m preparing for? Natural disasters. I just read a very sobering article on the upcoming big earthquake for the Pacific Northwest.

But hey, I have a plan. Bug-out bags, stocked pantry, kerosene lanterns and candles, water filters, hunting rifle, and lots of vodka.

I’m still slightly worried about that volcano though. And the giant mutant spider from a Midnight Theater episode. And tornadoes. Man, don’t get me started on tornadoes.

Are you prepared? There’s a fine line between paranoia and preparedness, between nightmares and reality. It never hurts to at least have a blanket, candles, and some water in your car though.

Oops. I took the candles out. They melted.

(Ha, looking at the tags for this post you’d think I was a bit paranoid…)

Boring Words

/ Lisa / 4 Comments

I’ve started a stand-alone book not connected to the mystery series, with multiple point of view characters.

Last night I worked on the beginning scene with one of those characters. Several months ago I wrote opening scenes with this character that I liked a lot. Jumping right into the action. But then I realized I needed to back up and introduce the opening scenes.

Words flowed just great last night. Fingers flying on the keyboard. Until I realized the fingers weren’t flying, they were skimming. And I was yawning.

You know what? If you’re bored with the story when you’re writing it, the readers sure aren’t going to be thrilled while reading.

I went to bed.

The problem is obvious. In this scene I have a teacher with a mysterious background, and eight students heading out on a field trip in the mountains. The original beginning started in the middle of dramatic action. This version I wanted to set the stage for that action. What made it so boring was not realizing that setting the stage means just moving a few pieces in. You don’t necessarily have to bring in every tiny piece of stage decoration.

In other words, I was introducing each person and trying to feed in a little of who each person was. Description, a bit of their personality quirks, a little dialog, some of the teacher’s opinions on each of them. I know better than to throw in all the backstory at once, but even this amount of information was too much.

Part of this obvious problem is the number of characters in the opening scene. I wanted to set the names of each before the reader, to plant those names preparing for the coming action. But nine characters in the opening scene, with an introduction on each of them, turned into a boring information dump, even though I salted it with dialog and movement. Especially when only a few are going to be pivotal to the story. (Teaser: the rest are needed to provide bodies…)

So tonight I’m going back and deleting most of what I wrote last night. The opening will be replaced with introduction, description, etc., on, at the most, the teacher and two or three students. And even that may be too much. The remaining students can have attention drawn to them through something as simple as the teacher thinking about taking eight kids into the woods. That’s sufficient to tell the reader there are more kids on scene. And then as the story unfolds, as the action begins, each of those eight will play their parts.

Years ago I would have struggled much longer to make the story work. I would have ignored the inner critic yawning loudly. I would have ignored the inner critic finally yelling ‘BORING!!!!’ and kept writing. I would have told myself that if I plowed ahead, things would improve.

Now, a little wiser, I’m more ruthless. If it’s not working it’s time to cut and toss. If I’m bored I need to go back to the point where I started losing interest, cut everything from that point forward, and start over.

It never pays in the long run to force a story where it doesn’t want to go. The detour takes way too much effort and sometimes you never find your way back to where the story needs to be. I’ve learned to listen to my instinct and to not be afraid to trust that feeling. And this time it only took me a day to figure out the problem instead of weeks of writing and fighting it, and then more weeks of figuring out how to fix the problem.

But man, last night? That was some of the most awful, boring writing I’ve done in a very long time. Let’s blame the heat, shall we?

In the meantime I need to go to the beginning I liked. I think there will be a way to add in what I tried to do last night, in a much tighter way. I probably don’t need as much stage setting as I thought I did.

Maybe I’ll be holding my breath as I madly type, instead of yawning.

Truth in Our Words

/ Lisa / 8 Comments

Yesterday I found out a friend of mine has been diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer. After we cried together, she said things to me like, ‘I want this gone!’ ‘I want my body back!’ and then she asked what she should say when people ask ‘how are you?’.

You know. The trite opening. “How are you?” “Fine! How are You?”

The question we ask so often. The answer we always give. It’s something we use to start conversations, or to politely acknowledge the other’s presence when met in public. Something that allows you to speak and yet at the same time, quickly move on.

I told her what I had learned in going through the same thing. I’d reply with, ‘do you really want to know?’. Not in a sarcastic tone, but meaning it. If you truly want to know, I’ll tell you. If not, let’s move on. Either way is okay.

When you respond that way, there’s always a double-take. People don’t expect it. In their minds they’ve already moved on to the next topic. There’s hesitation that pops into their eyes. You can see them thinking that maybe they don’t actually want to know.

It’s like the time another friend was in the hospital getting treatments for leukemia. When I visited, I asked her what she needed. You know, that sister question to the statement ‘Let me know if I can help’. She said to me that what she needed most was someone to let her be sad. That so many visitors were coming in cheerful and chirpy, wanting to cheer her up, when what she needed was to cry, to rail against fate, to be honest. That was in the 1970s and was a lesson I never forgot.

Don’t ask unless you want honest answers.

And if someone does give you an honest answer, honor that. Don’t back away.

Sometimes our conversations are so shallow, so surface. Words to pass the time, to be polite, to say the expected thing. We talk about the weather in line at the grocery store. We ask how someone’s day is going or how their kids are. But how often do we really mean the questions? How often do we truly want to hear the answer? How often do we ask, even while our mind is wishing they’d hurry up and fill that grocery sack because there’s ten more errands waiting?

I wonder two things. Why we feel the need to fill air space around us with words that mean nothing, and why do we not say what we really want to say?

I know, polite society, societal norms, expectations. But still, why?

And then when someone does not meet those societal expectations, like, say, my husband who has no desire to engage in conversation with strangers, they are treated like they are rude.

Me? I can talk to anyone, anywhere, about anything. I want to hear everyone’s stories.

But I’m still getting hung up on why we talk but don’t speak, why we ask but don’t listen.

So if any of you meet up with me and I ask, ‘how are you?’ it’s because I really want to know. And I hope you’ll be honest with me.

Let your words be pure, be strong, and define you.

Life is too short to do otherwise.