Monthly Archives: February 2016
MAH JONGG, HEADACHES, AND TIME TRAVEL
MAH JONGG, HEADACHES AND TIME TRAVEL
Mah Jongg has nothing to do with writing, unless one writes a story about the game. It’s a lot of fun to play. Writing can be fun too, but I’ll get to why sometimes it isn’t in just a minute.
On Saturday I finished the fourth of four Mah Jongg classes at the Haverhill Library, the same library where that illustrious group, the Thursday Night Writes, meets each week to critique the heck out of one another. Criticism can be fun when you are on the dishing out end, but this past Thursday I was on the receiving end. It wasn’t too, too bad. If you can keep an open and disengaged mind the bad stuff can just float over your head while you write down the criticisms. It seems the major problem in my current story is getting the hang of time travel.
In the film Back to the Future, and in one of the Harry Potter stories, why can one person appear in a time and place both as the present existence of himself and as a future or past existence, yet I’m not allowed do it in my story? Is it such a big deal to stretch and break the bonds of believability? This is why writing sometimes is not fun, when one just can not grasp why one’s critique group cannot grasp the concept!
But, back to Mah Jongg. This was the first time I’ve taught the game to a group. And to a large group of ten, only one of whom had actually touched a Mah Jongg tile before, and yet no one threw anything at me. That, in itself, was both rewarding, and remarkable. It can be frustrating when you don’t know the game. Even when you do know the game. When you are just learning the rules sometimes you just can not grasp the concept of why the game is played that way. Grasping new concepts, slippery concepts like time travel and Mah Jongg, make your head hurt. Several times during the class on Saturday I heard someone say they had a headache.
Figuring out my time travel issue will probably give me a headache at some point this week. If anyone can give me a definitive explanation of time travel, in simple terms that a lay person can understand, I’d be most thankful.
THE END
THE END
For the past year I’ve been keeping a sort of journal. It’s not a journal about myself. Perish the thought someone would actually choose that to read out all the things I’ve written. Really. Perish.
This journal is about endings. How to wrap up a story in the best possible way, with the best possible choice of words, and the best finale to the great work one has just finished. In this journal I write down the title and author, and just a bit of the opening lines to jog my memory as to which book this is, because it’s been so long since I read it. Then I dart to the end, to the author’s nugget summation, the wrap-up, and I write down the closing paragraph, or maybe just a few sentences. Some authors take pages for their closing. Some, just a few words.
The March/April issue of Writer’s Digest has a great article all the way back on p.40, by Jacquelyn Mitchard. It’s entitled, “Goodbye to All That,” and it’s all about endings. Charles Dickens could take pages to finalize his novels. Charlotte Bronte took but four words at the end of Jane Eyre: “Reader, I married him.” Most everything else ever written lies somewhere betwixt the two.
One of Ms. Mitchard’s comments was about the late David Foster Wallace. DFW admitted that his masterwork, Infinite Jest, just simply “stopped” rather than truly ending. A post-millennial trend, he suggested.
Well, isn’t that just great. I want a book to end. I want to know when it ends, and I want a great ending.
I’ve mentioned Infinite Jest in a previous post. It has no plot, no real main character, no story arc, no cohesion even unto itself. And it’s 1,445 pages long! I knew what I was getting myself into when I began it, so it’s my own fault. I’m on page 400 something, and thank goodness the last 400-500 pages are footnotes, and I can pass on those. And, strange as it seems, I have enjoyed DFW’s style, if not subject matter. But now I find that there’s no way of even knowing when to stop reading! It’s a bit much, really.
Perhaps, if I’m lucky, DFW wrote those timeless words at the point where his story just stops:
THE END
Adios to the gun
Two Thursdays ago I submitted to my writing group for critique my short story “The Intruder” now renamed “He’s All She’s Got.” As usual, my submission generated a fair amount of “positive criticism.”
Our facilitator, John, pointed out that I had “not fully imagined from the inside” the main scene that involved the gun, the intruder, and the tying up to the newel post of my protagonist. I have since attempted to immerse myself deeper into this scene only to discover that I have imagined it to the fullest extent possible. I just can’t write any more realistically about guns and tying up people.
I’ve given my story a hard look–a VERY hard look–and decided to rewrite it with more of a focus on the relationship between the mother and her daughter. I think it best to say adios to the gun scene. What a relief. Eleanor, who has worked tirelessly on a gun scene for possibly years suggested an alternative to my opening scene that does not involve a gun and I’m going to give it a try. Naturally, this change will ripple throughout the story. It’s all for the good. I am better at writing about relationships than guns.
Once again I am thankful for the input from my writing group. Without their advice, I’d–well, I’d be a wannabe writer without any possibility of publication. With them, my odds are slightly better. When we concluded the discussion of my short story, I made a negative comment about it. Immediately, thousands of miles away, I heard “it’s a good story” and “I like your story.” That was enough encouragement for another go-round. Thanks, guys!
What I find of interest is that when I am working on one project, my short story in this instance, all sorts of ideas for my other current project, (my book, “Anne”) erupt unbidden. I do wonder if all other writers have this problem, or if it just belongs to us procrastinators, for whom it is a means of getting out of what we are supposed to be doing.
Last week I took a break from my writing group and writing as my mother, sister and 
brother-in-law visited from New Hampshire. We relaxed by the pool at their resort, did a few tourist activities, and ate out, naturally. We were pleased we could reward them for their long flight with sunshine and some record-breaking temps in the 80’s. Too bad they had to return to temperatures that were nearly 100 degrees lower (with wind chill) than what they enjoyed here.
Now I will have time to write–the grandkids will be in school, Joy will be working, Steve will be golfing, and, oh, darn, the sun will be shining and temps will be even higher….
Bad Reads
“Leave me alone. I’m reading.” We’ve all said it, and we haven’t said it half as often as we wanted to. Give us a good book, and the world can stay on hold forever.
But how about, “Somebody get me out of this book! Where are the telemarketers when you need them?”
Why do we keep slogging through books we don’t want to read? We of all people, wordsmiths, people of literary judgment! (And in my case, old people. I don’t have decades to waste.)
Lately, I’ve been buzz-bombed by these loser books. The worst of them was called The Matter of the Gods, by Clifford Ando. It purports to be a history of religion in ancient Rome. In a former incarnation, I was a classicist, and mythology was my specialty. So I bought the d***** book. Imagine the ghastliest academese prose, wrenched and decorated to sound arch, while avoiding the dreadful faux pas of actually suggesting any conclusions. That’s MotG.
Why did I finish it? Because every couple of pages, he’d quote an ancient writer I’d never read or drop in a factoid on Roman ritual that was new to me. Drop a trail of M&Ms and I’ll follow you anywhere. It’s the kind of reinforcement that creates drug addicts.
Running in tandem with MotG was Antidote to Venom, by Freeman Wills Crofts. Crofts was one of the most popular mystery writers of the Golden Age, God knows why. I bought it because I’m working on a book that involves snake venom. Crofts’ golden rule seems to be that every thought, speech and action must be reported at least twice. Plans must be explained at length, and then carried out at equal length, in the same sequence. Plod. Plod. Plod. And to top it off, one of his villains has an alibi so unbreakable that Crofts has to give him a religious conversion at the end, to elicit a confession!
Why did I finish it? Sheer bloody-mindedness. Not to be able to finish a book in my own genre and of the period I most admire was too shaming. Also, it had just been reissued. So publishers thought it would sell, right? I should see why, right? I still don’t know.
Then there are the bestsellers everyone else has read. A few years ago, I read Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84. It was 944 pages of I-still-don’t-know-what. It had something to do with domestic violence; I figured that much out. It had an alternate universe in it, only it wasn’t all that alternate.
Why did I finish it? This one was almost justified. Murakami’s prose floated me along in a mental state just like that of his confused characters. This stuff was just happening. You couldn’t do anything about it, so you just did the next thing. Which was to read the next sentence. Still, 315 pages would have been enough.
Don’t even ask me about books written by friends.
So, what to do, assuming that you find you can’t just toss the book? Here are my strategies:
- Demote to bathroom. This worked, eventually, for The Matter of the Gods and Antidote to Venom. The time isn’t wasted, and page by page you get to the end. Please do not tear out completed pages and re-purpose them. That is cruel.
- Learn to skim. This used to be called speed reading. It doesn’t really work, but you can pretend it does, and if your eyes have traveled over every page, you are only half lying when you say you’ve read it.
- Arrange an unfortunate accident. This requires a degree of double-think, but what writer lacks that? Reading paperbacks in the bathtub is the easiest method. (Buy an oilier bubble bath.) Leave hardbacks on or near the recycle container. Forget them in waiting areas or on public transportation.
I’m about to start Chris Holm’s The Killing Kind. It’s about a hit man who only hits other hit men. I gobbled down three of his earlier books. I’ll have to find something else to read in the bathroom.
PRIMARY DAY
PRIMARY DAY
It was Primary Day for First In The Nation New Hampshire yesterday. The line-up of candidates on the ballots was extensive, to say the least. It reminded me of cereal aisles at grocery stores. So many brands to choose from, so many boxes, so many facadic advertising ploys reaching out into the aisles to grab at unsuspecting consumers. So much empty caloric sugar inside each box, and wheat that has been stripped of all it’s nutrients and replaced with refortified man-made ingredients. Tons of preservatives to make sure that the contents have a long shelf life, maybe as long as the shelf itself. And don’t forget that the cereal is boxed by weight, not by the contents which may have settled.
All sorts of shapes, flat, round, round with holes in them, chunky, colored pastelly or natural. A cereal for each and every member of the masses.
That’s what we had to choose from on Tuesday. A candidate for every palate. But very few that actually had any nutritional content.
I hate talking about politics, I get nowhere. I hate thinking about politics, but I did cast my vote.
Back in the seventies and eighties people discussed pre-,post-and a-millennialism. You got nowhere when you were sucked into one of those arguments. Now you get nowhere if you discuss global warming, aka climate change. Of course there’s climate change, there always has been, and always will be climate change.
As a matter of fact we have always had cereal, politics, and a knowledge that this world is not going to last forever though I’m not sure which actually came first. It’s probably a close tie. I think taxation fits in there nicely, too.
This following quiz might not be as much fun as Heidi’s quiz a few weeks ago, but what the heck. Go for it.
Arrange the items below in the order in which you think they happened/will happen in time. To keep this a writers blog I’ve thrown in some books.
Politics
The end of the world
The Bible
Cereal
Pride and prejudice (the sins)
Taxation
Jasper Fforde’s next Thursday Next in his series.
My cosy mystery
Pride and Prejudice (the book)
Climate change
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Do let me know what you think.
Rediscoveries
I’ve always had an interest in rediscovering old mysteries. I love seeing how the stories are constructed and the characters fleshed out, and comparing the authors’ techniques to the contemporary writers I read. I love finding new (to me) words and phrasings—meaching, roistering. Most of all
, though, I delight in finding the cultural and historical threads that connect my own time to the period of the old books—political jokes that haven’t changed, societal expectations that have.
My latest discovery is The Horizontal Man by Helen Eustis. Originally published in 1946, it has been republished in Sarah Weinman’s excellent two-volume collection of novels by women crime writers of the ’40s and ’50s. The Horizontal Man takes place at a fictional women’s college in the Berkshires, and in many ways echoes the cozy, village-set mysteries of Agatha Christie. Set in autumn, when the leaves have strayed from the trees, the small college town is exposed to Eustis’s crisp, satirical delineations. The murder of a handsome, sexually attractive English professor brings to the fore the neuroses, pretensions, snobbery, and jealousies that flourish in a quaint, academic environment. Helen Eustis, too, knew that environment well: She married her English professor when she was a student at Smith College.
Plus ça change . . . Eustis could be describing any English department functioning today. Her character studies, especially of the minds of the insecure professors grappling for position, are so spot on, you feel you’ve met these people before. She pokes a little fun at them, but they aren’t so overdrawn as to become caricatures. The Horizontal Man manages to be a smart mystery that expects its readers to be as smart as its characters.
What is out of date? Well, for one, the psycho-babble is risible now—but that was our understanding of the human mind at the time the novel was written. The unmarried professors live in boarding houses, the students’ dorms have house mothers. To me this is all part of the fun of discovering what the day-to-day life of a college community was like in the forties.
Helen Eustis was not a prolific writer. In fact, The Horizontal Man was her only novel, but it was critically acclaimed at the time and it won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America. In addition to a collection of short stories, The Captain and the Kings Depart and Other Stories (1943), she wrote for the New Yorker and other periodicals and translated George Simenon into English.
Sarah Weinman in her anthology is saving Helen Eustis and the other women crime writers she included—Margaret Millar, Charlotte Armstrong, Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, to name a few—from drifting into obscurity. And their novels are worthy of our attention and study for their craft, their engaging suspense, and the way they weave in a woman’s perspective from an era on the cusp of revolutionary societal changes.
My (so-called) life as a writer
Technology is great (when it works, of course). For the past two Thursday nights I’ve been able to FaceTime with my writing group back in New Hampshire. I hope the second Thursday was an improvement for them–I used my iPad instead of my iPhone and they added speakers. The only problem on my end is that it’s harder to interrupt someone when you’re an image on a screen!
With the two hour time difference, I had no choice last Thursday but to eat my dinner while we had our discussion. I don’t imagine my slurping spaghetti noodles was a very appealing sight. That won’t be an option this week as I volunteered to submit. Tacky to eat and present at the same time.
Yikes. What was I thinking? I’ve been much too busy enjoying myself in sunny, warm Arizona (not so much today as we had a storm blow through last night–thank you, El Nino) to find time to write. And we’ve had visitors from New Hampshire. And the three grandkids passed a diluted version of their debilitating virus to me which kept me in bed part of this past weekend. And this coming weekend we have family from New Hampshire arriving.
And…that’s my life as a writer. Full of excuses as to why I haven’t written. But as I look through my two yellow pads of paper, I see pages of notes about both my story, “The Intruder,” and my book, “Anne.” But notes, in my book, don’t constitute writing. And as useful as they are to me, I can’t submit them to my writing group.
My notes on “Anne” pertain to combining my three related novels into one, not as easy a task as I originally anticipated. The process of writing my thoughts down on paper led me to the realization that I am starting the novel with Anne’s story and I need to conclude the novel with her story. My original plan was to end the novel with her daughter Olivia’s story. I suppose if I keep writing notes about the book I’ll come to a different conclusion.
I did have a motivational experience at, of all places, my grandson’s soccer tournament in Tucson. The opening ceremonies included the typical dais with a podium, microphone, and folding chairs. And a replica Olympic torch. Just the sight of the dais (sans the torch) transported me back to a scene in “Anne.”
Time to write (revise, finish) the damn book!
So heads up, writing group. If I get my act together, you’ll be reading a new (improved?) version of “The Intruder” this week. If I don’t, well…I’ll just have to blame it on technology.
Eleanor Ingbretson
Karen Whalen
llandrigan
Heidi Wilson
Mike M
Thursday Night Writes 