The Fight

In the direct vicinity of Franklin, an inside tour of every house had been procured at one time or the other. Perhaps a ball had been thrown in someone's back yard, or the cat was in heat, moaning under a brand new deck, owner resting above with grill blazing away. Everyone knew everyone, and nobody's mother cared about where you went when your feet jumped off the front steps.

We spent most of our time in the front yard. That's where all the action was. One hot July day, three of us neighborhood girls were practicing a song, with hand movements and all. Our skinny, tanned legs stood above the side ditch on the gravel road, yellow sun blazing at our tangled strands, strappy sandals thrown off wiggling toes.

"Okay! Your arms ain't right! You have to swing it around like this when we sing, 'In the naaame of love.'"

I was in the middle, pretending to be Diana Ross. It was easy. Even with pale skin and straight up and down body, I found myself comfortably masquerading as some sort of rock or movie star. Anything but me.

Joe Weitz came running up the street. His breath wheezed in and out from red, puffed cheeks. "Your brother . . . he's . . . in a fight! Down the block!"

My brother? No, not mine. Marshall didn't fight. Sure, he hit us girls once in a while, but he'd never get in a fight with another boy. I followed slow as my friends ran up the hill and down Jackson Street. The gravel cut into my bare soles. I was used to it. When I turned the hill, I saw a jumbled connection of two bodies, rolling, tugging, ripping in the ditch. One with dark brown hair and freckled arms.

"He's gonna kill 'em!" A girl wailed, hair flying around as she turned to meet my stare.

"Who?"

"Mike. He said he was going to kill your brother!"

Protection flared inside of me. No one was going to kill my brother. I'd kill them first.

SLUG. CRACK.

All the kids cheered. Marshall had managed to flip Mike down underneath his legs and was producing a good set of swings. I felt sick. Who would tell mother? How would we explain the huge welt already apparent on Marshall's upper left cheek? Oh god, I saw blood now, as Mike made a surprise flip and moved Marshall down again under his torso.

I hated fighting. Hated yelling. There'd been enough of it in my own house to cure me for life. I still winced at the memory of father punching Mom's tooth out, after holding her upside down by the ankles. Then there was the day Mom finally lost it and grabbed a broken glass from the sink—the very one thrown from Dad's hands, fate was cruel—and threatened to slash him to pieces if he didn't get out of our house for good. It worked. He left, and now we were free.

And, of course, now we were fighting in ditches.

I grabbed Lisa and Beth's hands and told them to line up next to me. "Sing," I commanded, to their confused and unwilling stares. "Sing the song, dammit!"

We started. Our voices were meek, rivaled against the shouts and grunts of grade school disquietude. "Stop! In the name of love. . .. before you break my heart." A couple of kids turned to look at us. "Stop! In the name of love . . . before you break my heart."

Swing your hips, shoot that hand out. "Think it o-o-o-ver."

Elbows jammed into ribs. Slowly, everyone began to turn around to watch. Snickering ensued. The boys stopped rolling in the ditch. They were lying there, panting in disbelief. I could see it in Marshall's eyes, he was mad at me. I'd get it later.

"Before you break my heart . . ." My voice trailed off into nothing.

The happening was spent, time to go home. Kids dispersed to their individual dwellings, all split-level 1970's suburbia. They had nice televisions, stay at home moms, dads that played baseball in the backyard. We had cracked black and white PBS. But it was home.

I followed Marshall, with only a whisper, "I'm sorry."

He ignored me, apparently thinking beyond our current situation to the next, "I hate iodine."

The words were solvent. Mom was waiting at the door—had already heard. She stood with a hint of pride mixed in among fear and relief, and in her hands was a bottle of the stinging red syrup.

"Crap."

Another summer day gone on Franklin Street. The next one waited; silent.

Questions for a Thursday

Don't you love your characters conversations? I think this has to be a huge thing for fiction writers. I'm basically an introvert in real life and so the ability to bring these people together and have them interact in any way I please, that's just an amazing feeling.

Are you lonely when the voices go away? Or are you distanced enough so that a character is just a thing you control and there's no need for getting emotional, mate? I'm way too connected. Last week I went through a phase of loneliness while waiting for the character voices to start flowing in my head again. It was awful. The realization hit that I very much need an internal presence of some sort of creation, whether it be songwriting, fiction writing, anything. My guess is most writers are similar in this need.

How far will you reach in the bread bag to get a nice, soft piece of bread, ignoring the sacrificial crusts?

Oh, why do we love Edward so much? Haha, I don't even have to say his last name.

That's all I will ask for now. I hope the sun comes out! Have a wicked writing day!

Cake-1, Me-0

As you can see, I had problems with the cake. But then, what fun would it be if I made something perfect on the first try? The main issue was pre-production, partly from my darling little Julia, who placed a bag of powdered sugar on a hot burner. When I reached to quickly grab it off, I discovered the plastic had melted which caused about four cups of white powder to fly up the in air. It took me forever to clean the kitchen, and then after that things just sort of never came back into focus. The major mistake I made was in pouring too much batter in the pan which resulted in a heavy, buttery, very crumbly cake. No melting in the mouth. Nothing that a little bit of whipped cream and strawberries can't fix! Right?!

I'd like to thank my wonderful new friend, Kimberly Franklin for awarding me with my very first blogger award. Thank you so much! I'll use it wisely(if I can figure out how to use it).

This has been a tough writing week. I was so into the re-writes, moving along steady, having fun, but now . . . not so much. The only thing to do is work through it without any editing, because if I start to think too much, I'll stop and erase, stop and erase. My good friend Tess Hilmo unplugged last week, and I think I'll do the same next week. If anything, it will be fun to immerse myself in the characters again like before. It's no fun being me with no voices!

Wishing all my friends a spectacular day of writing, good weather, happy times and sweet music!

Tuesday I Beseech Thee, Don't Kiss My Betty Crocker Grits

I was looking through a 1950 Betty Crocker cook book that I have (it's a reprint) and thought it would be fun to try a different recipe every week and blog about it. So far, these old recipes seems to be quite good, which surprised me for some reason. I guess I thought time and trial would render these things archaic, but it's just not true. So, I need to figure out which one I'm going to try first. I should go basic, right? I'll do the Rich Yellow Cake, tender, buttery; will melt in your mouth. Okay, let's see. I'll let you know how it turns out tomorrow.

Health Care Reform. Wow. It's actually happening.

Can you believe all the drama going on over this thing? People are talking hate and all sorts of things I don't even want to mention. It's shocking, but typical of America to react this way. We resisted the end of slavery, even went to war over it. We resisted women's right to vote. We resisted equal rights. I think we are a stubborn country and incredibly fear-driven. This is a good chance for us to move forward in the right kind of way. Maybe other countries won't hate us so much any more.

Okay, and here's a pic of me with the beaded earrings

I love so much. I look like a freak, but whatever, you guys have never seen a picture of me so I'm going to do it and to hell with how goofy I look.

Manic Monday

I know I promised it would be Music Monday, and it is . . . in a parallel universe. In this Universe, there will be no Music Monday.

Instead, I will just ramble on and on about myself.

Oh cripes, that's no fun.

Okay, maybe I'll just talk about my characters. Emma and William were in love and she was going to help him reverse his ghost-like invisibility in the Reaping, but she crashed the old Pontiac into Jesse's Camaro, and now she has amnesia. So . . . she wakes up at the hospital and William says he's her angel and she is falling in love with him all over again, but then Jesse shows up and says he loves her and that they were engaged to be married. Emma's like, "Wha? Okay, if you say so." And now she has to decide, all with a big bandage on her head, whether or not she should go to New York with Jesse, or stay and help this beautiful angel out who she's worried something bad is going to happen to.

Sigh. I think I'm going to make cookies today.

And here's The Cars

Synaptic Party Sunday

Okay, so Spring Break is almost officially over. It was fun, but it'll be nice to get back to my regular schedule. For the month previous, I had myself in a nice state of lunacy where characters could come and sit for a while, feet on couch, wine in hand. So, I gotta put the old welcome mat out again and tell all those voices to come back and stay indefinitely.

Ferona . . . the chocolate is waiting.

And I can't leave without posting this video. I love, love, love this band and the trippy, organic lyrics of Dewey Bunnell.

You are Here

One of my favorite books is Nowhere Man, a collection of journal entries by John Lennon written in the few years preceding his death. I loved his confessions on the trials of fatherhood, including prayers for growth and blessings to the gods for any success. I loved the dreams he wrote down, and the sexual, psychedelic quality of the way he saw everything in the universe.

He was hopelessly addicted to coffee and cigarettes though, and he lamented his trials with that. A fast would end, and he'd jump right back into his addiction. But the main thread of his life was not about his failures, it was about trying to be better. I love that he tried. Every day he tried. That's such a beautiful thing to me.

What I really loved about him was that he wore his heart on his sleeve. Oh wow, I just totally had an idea to make a psychedelic heart and put it on the sleeve of my old black leather jacket. That would be so cool. Since I already own dead animal flesh, I might as well work with it.

Here's my favorite video of him. Yoko's in there too. They're having fun messing with a whole roomful of minds. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaqHURGZYDI&feature=channel_page

Have a good day folks. Don't forget to tip your waitress over on the way out.

Line Art

I've always loved line drawings. Thurber is my ink guru. His work, The Last Flower, influenced me early on in my time of artistic training. But, the real reason I love line drawings is because they are simple and clean with no fuss. And, as you can see, I love the human form. Life Drawing was one of my favorite classes way back when.

Titles are: Mother and Child, Two Left Feet, Backward Flower Girl, and Nude Lounge

Time for a Retromercial

Here's a list of items I remember fondly from the 1970's.

Pop Rocks

We had a taste of this product right before the rumors

started. You know the ones, where some kid ate a couple packages and

his stomach exploded? I still have trouble eating them because of that urban legend. Backyard kid talk is pretty heavy stuff.

Breck Shampoo

Who didn't want mega-miles of golden,

waving hair? All possible with one fabulous bottle of amber-colored Breck Shampoo! Prell was freakishly green, stinky, and it left your hair heavy and dull. Head and Shoulders just made your dandruff worse, and Ooh lala Vidal Sassoon cost too darn much. Breck fit somewhere in the middle. Pure liquid gold.

RC Cola

Little metal tabs were everywhere. In the ditch, the gravel road, the baseball park, the beach at Paola Lake. Why? Because we were havin' fun drinking our super sweet and spicy RC Cola! The can design is hauntingly familiar to the red white and blue of the Pepsi logo, but whatevva. It was good stuff. Bubble Up, RC, Dr Pepper . . . they all say 1970's picnic to me.

Palmolive

We actually did it. We dipped out hands in Palmolive. We grabbed a little bowl from the cabinet, squeezed in some of the green

goo and then dipped. And waited. After a few minutes, Mom would walk in the kitchen and start yelling about how much it cost to buy one

little thing of soap, and we'd scatter and run to the backyard, hands dripping with slime. A whole hose-full of hot summer water later, and the verdict was in: Palmolive didn't make your hands softer. It just made them . . . really clean.

Hamm's Beer

"From the land of sky-blue waters . . ." All of us kids sitting around the tube on Super Bowl Sunday saw how cute the ads were, and we often sang the little jingle that sounded akin to an old Indian chant, "Hamm's the beer refreshing, Hamm's the beer refreshing, Hamm's . . ." Someday when we were old enough to drink, this was the exact beer we were going to buy. We'd drink it every day, every night, at dinner, at the park, at the movies—all over the place. Because that bear was too cute and he needed our support to help him beat all those mean woodland animals that kept making his life a living hell. This is for you old Hamm's bear, gulp.

Satisfaction

Is it okay for a writer to be satisfied with their work?

I ask this question because I—like so many writers—struggle with the need to always be better. Everything I do is executed with intuition and a careful step, yet there's a great fear that if ever published, other writers will tear me to pieces. Sometimes, I'm so critical that it's almost akin to stepping on my toes while writing, constantly tripping over words, erasing, writing, loving, hating . . . When is a writer allowed to be satisfied?

The biggest thing I have learned, and am still learning, is that confidence is key. It's the backbone to your dreams, and without it, nothing can stand. When I hear myself saying, "I just can't get this section right!" I insert a little confidence and clear away the doubt with, "You're not only going to make it work, you're going to make it brilliant." It's the only way.

There were many situations in my life that were hard to battle through, and I've learned to keep confidence close-by, just in case. When doubt creeps in I grab hold of the old backbone and keep strong. Doubt, yes, give-up? NO.

So again, do you over critique yourself, and how do you get through the writer's doubts? Family, friends, faith? Chocolate?

I Broke my Wii on Spring Break

I haven't much time to write. It's spring vacation and several kids are holding me hostage, forcing me to watch Garfield and all sorts of horrible stuff. The worst of all–something is wrong with our Wii. I know.

Yesterday brought more progress in my rewrite. I'm getting closer and it feels great!

Of course, I'm back at a crossroads, trying to figure out how to rewrite the next few chapters. But, you know I love it, so don't sweat a tear.

*Contest Alert* Notice on the upper sidebar I have a link for a really cool Twilight contest. Just visit the links to befriend some really cool gals, read their blogs, comment and maybe win free schwag. It rocks!

Have a great day and let me know how your writing day is going. I'd love to hear!!