What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger

"Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better." 
"The first draft of anything is sh*t." Ernest Hemingway

 
I could likely make Ernie proud.

I didn’t die from the red marks and crossed out words in my manuscript when I got it back from my editor. It did hurt a bit, but that was only because I was taking it too personally.

This morning I started working on revision.

This is much harder than one would imagine. Do you know when you live, work or spend a lot of time in a place, it is so familiar to you. Pick a place like that and describe it. Do you ever find that in describing it, you assume that others can see the picture that is in your own head?

I worked in the jail for over 6 years in my career. I can close my eyes and see what the inside of the jail looks like, what the different tanks, dorms and cells look like, what it smells like, what  it sounds like. There are now reality shows on television about jail, I think one is called “Lockup”.  As I write about events that happened in the jail and I use terms like “I told the inmates to ‘lockdown’”, I for some reason assume that most other people will know what that means. As I describe officers going into a tank to confront a group of inmates I begin to assume that others can picture it in their own head as I can picture it in mine.

I am once again in the process of learning how to “show, not tell”. I am trying to follow the advice of another writer who said to me, “Writing so vividly that the imagination can form the pictures for your reader is an aquired art, practice practice practice”.

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.  ~Anton Chekhov

Digging Out

I’m baaaaack.  Sorry for the rather long intermission.

After a couple of flight delays, a whole bunch of snow and some serious snow plowing by the folks at the Philadelphia airport I finally made it home . But that was a week and a half ago and I'm just now getting back to this blog.

I have been in a funk. Can’t necessarily explain why but I just felt like I was in quicksand. And like digging out from the snow, I needed to dig out from whatever was weighing me down. Some of it may have had to do with the fact that this week I will be receiving my manuscript back from my editor. It seems to be yet another of those watershed moments.

Have you ever been waiting for news, like an evaluation or a report card? You sit and think about how you would like it all to turn out. I did that, I was hoping for high marks.

In reality, I had worked for some months now on convincing myself that there would definitely be some changes necessary once the editor read the manuscript, but, she had been hearing it section by section over the past several months in our writer’s workshop and her comments had been positive.

So I had worked at convincing myself that any editing she did would be relatively minor.

I know now that isn’t necessarily true. Many writers spend years writing their books …. YEARS!  Who was I to think that after spending what almost a  year writing mine that this first time the editor read it through as one whole manuscript it would be done? Well that is not real life.

I have spent the last several days preparing myself for what is bound to be a whole lot of revisions and rewrites. When will it finally be done? I have no clue. The thought of it taking another year, or two, or whatever it takes is hard for me. I like instant gratification. More than instant gratification, I want it to be good; I want it to be right.

I am taking a deep breath, trying to keep a positive attitude, reminding myself that whatever suggestions my editor makes and corrections she suggests are in my best interest, not a personal attack on me.

I will admit the thought of giving up crossed my mind when I started to consider another year or however long it would take me to get it right. But I have come this far, I know it can be good, and I know that I will be thanking my editor when it is accepted for publication. (Did you notice I said when, not if?)

I think the weather had something to do with me starting to feel better. Yesterday was in the mid 60’s here, sunny and beautiful. I cannot wait for spring! Today the rain and overcast returned and it is supposed to get cold again.  Let’s hope it doesn’t last long, I could use at least a week of sunny warm weather.

However, the thing that turned me around the most was a wonderful conversation with my daughter, wasn’t anything specifically she said, just helped me to talk about what was on my mind and let it go.

So I’m back at it, don’t be surprised if there are several blog posts in a rather short amount of time, need to catch up, you know.

So should we start a pool on how long it will take me to get this manuscript thing actually done and ready to send to an agent? (Be nice!)

Finding a Story while Helping Dad Move

I’m in Philadelphia right now, helping to take care of my sister’s house and dog while she and her husband vacation in Belize, but also to help my father move into an apartment here.

My father is 82, will be 83 in a couple of months. He is in good shape, sharp mentally and relatively healthy, thank goodness. He lived in the San Francisco Bay Area until my mother passed away 12 years ago, and then moved to the Sierra Foothills, close to where I lived. As one or another issue arose – a hospital visit, surgery, a little more than minor illnesses – I became happier that he lived close, that I could help him out and help see that all the questions were answered by doctors and maybe help to act somewhat as an advocate for him.

Then a year and a half ago I moved from California to Nashville, leaving the closest daughter more than three hours away from dad. With a lot of input from all of his four daughters and some grandkids etc., dad decided to move to be closer to one of us. That gave him the choice of San Francisco CA, Orange County CA, Philadelphia PA, or Nashville TN.

I know that we are luckier than many folks. I have seen many people my age who are forced to take away their parents cars and keys because they no longer can manage driving on their own. For many seniors the car is their last bit of true independence and for many families it truly becomes a fight, and not a pretty one.

My dad decided on his own that he no longer felt that comfortable driving and in fact, it at times made him nervous to drive. He decided he wanted to move somewhere that he no longer had to own a car. Okay that took Orange County and Nashville out of the picture. (Although my daughter and I told him, we would happily drive him where he needed to go if he wanted to move to Nashville … he didn’t think that was the answer).

So … we looked at apartments in San Francisco. Dad loves San Francisco, the city itself, the restaurants, the culture, great public transportation and one of his four favorite daughters lives there. But, San Francisco is expensive, really expensive and finding a place that fit all his needs was not as easy as we had once thought.

Dad decided Philadelphia was the place for him and he sold his house, packed up and flew east. He stayed with one of his other four favorite daughters for a time, about an hour outside of the city and found an apartment in a high rise close to what is known as Center City.

Philadelphia also has great public transportation, wonderful cultural attractions, outstanding restaurants and even sports teams that actually win championships. Huh, go figure.

This week we are making all the preparations for his move into the apartment and for his belongings to arrive on the eighth. While there, we have visited a little restaurant that appears to be fairly well known and is on the same property as his apartment. There are often residents of the complex there, and many of them are rather elderly as there are lots of seniors in these apartments.

I have read and people have told me, when you are thinking about characters for your writing, take notice of people around you, eavesdrop a little, you will find bits and pieces of conversations, style of speech, accents, all of which may later be true inspiration for a story, for a character, or for a setting.

Yesterday, while in this little restaurant I decided, if I truly want to write books, I should hang out in this restaurant every day. I was trying not to eavesdrop but they were sitting pretty close to us and you know how some people get when they start to lose a little bit of their hearing … the talk pretty darn loud.

So here are these three ladies sitting together. Probably all in their late 70’s maybe early 80’s. All looking’ pretty good. Although they were clearly of my dad’s generation, there was a sense about them that could transport you to another place and time, you could imagine these gals in their younger days, I would bet some real firecrackers at times.

One was wearing the obligatory purple velour workout suit. Another was wearing slacks and a beautiful sweater, make-up and hair perfectly done, even wearing stockings and heels.

The other was wearing a black dress and a hat and had quite a lot of makeup on. She had plenty of face make-up, rouge, lipstick that was a bit outside the contour of her own lips and eye make-up that included eyeliner on both the upper lid as well as the lower lash line. A little over the top. She was the one who dominated most of the conversation. Kind of made me think of Bette Davis in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" without the homicidal crazy part.

“You would not believe what I did last night, I amazed even myself, it was unbelievable.”

“What did you do?”

“I took that Yoga class. You should try it. When it started there were about twenty people they were all standing on one leg, you try that, go ahead stand up, try and stand on one leg, I couldn’t do it either but everyone else in there was standing on one leg.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that.”

“I know, I didn’t think I could either but when it was over I felt like I was 15 again! Limber, flexible, you know, like I was 15 again! Then we went out for a lovely dinner. And we had a great time and closed the place down. You should try it you end up feeling like you are 15 again!”

“I don’t want to do Yoga. I saw Miriam yesterday. You know Miriam, the gray haired lady? She made a comment about your makeup.”

“I think my makeup looks good!”

“I do too, I told her …”

“My makeup looks good I think I look good! It makes my eyes look bigger.”

“Would you shut up, I know I think it looks good too, I told her I thought you looked very pretty but would you get rid of that black spot?”

“What black spot?”

“Right there on your forehead.”

“I need a mirror, see this mirror, it is a great mirror, you know where I got it? I got it at the dollar store for two dollars?”

Then the waitress breaks in and says, “The dollar store for two dollars, they ripped you off!” and walks away chuckling.

“And what about how Miriam looks?”

“I agree, she doesn’t look that good.”

“Her makeup doesn’t look very good.”

“I know, that is what I  just said, she doesn’t look that good.”

Now you know why I could have sat there all day listening to these ladies gab. Although it did bring to mind the song from the musical “The Music Man” when the ladies sing, “Pick-a-little, talk-a-little, pick, pick, pick, talk, talk, pick-a-little more …..”

I finally had to pull myself away as our waitress came up, “Anything else I can get you hon? No? Okay sweetie, no dessert? Okay, here’s your check”.

I know there are characters or a story in there somewhere.

I also realized dad, who is in relatively good shape compared to lots of people around there, and probably some even younger than him, may be fighting the ladies off with a stick!