Candles on the mantle
Of bayberry and spice
And two escalabras hold
Cinnamon tealights
Five more candles in the bedroom
Of a greenish-yellow hue
An oillamp in the bathroom
With shells of pink and blue
There are boxes in the dresser
And more boxes in hutch
Of tealights and votives
And tapers and such
But when the power fails
I discover there’s a catch
As I stumble in the darkness
My kingdom for a match
Now for a personal note. I kept my nephew, an adorable little 4-year-old, for a 24-hour period, all by myself. Big deal, right? YES! I am a single woman, without much experience with children and this was the longest time I had him all to myself. I AM EXHAUSTED. Even after a Sunday for recovery. I can barely even think, which makes me irritable and a “joy” to have at work. My proverbial hat goes off to all mothers of 4-year-olds. You are truly amazing.
Asher and I swam, played at the park, and swam, and fed the ducks and turtles by the pond and swam, and swam and finally took a nap (PTL!) But while he was with me I was able to love on him constantly, and he needs that. You see, his parents are going through a divorce, and my family is seeing first hand how that affects a small child. He told me that his mother was gone, and she had left because of him. My heart broke. I told him that his mother did not leave because of him, and he said okay, but did he really believe that? I don’t know.
What I do know is that when someone meets my, nephew they cannot help but love him. He is friendly, loving, handsome, bright, and…Asher. He is my favorite man, and I love him.
I’m really good with ideas, and I can usually start a piece well, but after the first few pages, I usually get stuck. That’s usually because I get so excited by my new idea that I don’t really flesh out the character or even the story before I begin. So this blog is going to be about all the possibilities of where I could take The Day the Drier Died and the start of a good main character.
The main character: female, everything seems to be going right in her life. She has a fiancé. Let’s make him an up and coming lawyer. She and her fiancé are closing on a house which should be finalized by the time they get married. Job: lets say production assistant at a major retailer (just for grins). Family: parents–healthy, happy, married, brother: divorced, has child, lots of drama in his life, she is the “good one.”
Problems she could encounter: getting dumped, parents splitting up, losing promotion, losing job, house falls through, house doesn’t fall through, fiancé loses job, fiancé caught cheating, father caught cheating, business being bought out, pet dies, parent dies, brother dies, car breaks down, ex-boyfriend comes back into her life, co-worker stabs her in the back, shipment of something gets held up/lost/damaged.
Should take place in August/September as retailers are gearing up for Christmas, if chose the job route that would be the perfect time for something to go wrong and be devastating.
I don’t particularly like unhappy endings so I will most likely have the first paragraph fall before the end of the story. Which means she’s going to have to pull herself up by her boot straps. She’s going to have to have great strength of character. Let’s call her Hope.
One of my favorite things to do is write a poem from a random word. I used to be part of an online group on Gather that would send out a random work like “Spark” and ask that you create a poem around that word. Here is a poem that I wrote from the word “Olive.”
The recipe says olives,
So I stand here in aisle three
With a million different olives
Staring back at me,
Atalanti, Kalamata,
Alfonso, Nicoise and Queen,
Brine-cured and lye-cured,
Royal, Black and Green.
There are olives stuffed with garlic,
Pimentos and assorted nuts.
I’d try those stuffed with habaneros,
But I haven’t got the guts.
Spanish olives, Greek olives,
California olives too.
The market’s full of olives,
And I don’t know what to do.
So I take a breath and close my eyes,
And then I start to think,
I’ll just go out for dinner
And have the olive in my drink.
Francois Truffaut said that everyone who works in the domain of fiction is a bit crazy. The problem is to render this craziness interesting. Well, unlike Truffaut, I do not work in the domain of fiction–I live there. But don’t worry. I’m not crazy–at least, not yet. However, if being crazy is required for working in the domain of fiction, my goal is to be absolutely crackers.
In this blog, I am going to track my journey through writing and publishing a fiction novel. Though I am sure I will take side trips down short stories, poems, ideas for other novels and that thing that always seems to get in the way–real life.
So keep your hands in arms inside the ride at all times, because here we go!
Reading, Writing & Other Addictions 