Does this plot line make me look fat?

“Do I look fat in this outfit?”

Woe to the husband or boyfriend on the receiving end of that question. We know all too well that all too many women don’t want an honest answer. I admit that if I heard my better half blurt out, “Honey, you look like the broad side of a barn,” he wouldn’t hear anything from me for a day at least. Still, if I could go out looking better in a different outfit, I would like to know.

And yes, this does have something to do with writing.

I had polished a certain passage until it shined, and finally I felt courageous enough to share it at a recent writers’ forum. After some encouraging murmurings from the group, the young woman to my right timidly raised her hand. “The way you have the character positioned in the first paragraph - is that even physically possible?” I looked back at what I’d just read aloud. She was absolutely right.

How did I miss that?

That’s the question every writer asks about what they’ve crafted – indeed what every person asks about their day-to-day endeavors: There’s a blank spot in that paint job; There’s a typo in that memo; There’s a thread dangling from your jacket.

How did I miss that?

If you’re never asking that question, it could indicate that you’re not taking enough risks, not trying to live up to your potential. We must be made to ask that question from time to time, and that’s what a writers’ group can do for you. They can be the friends who feel safe in saying to you:

“Actually, that sentence is a little too long.”

or

“No, that narrative doesn’t suit you.”

or

“That dialogue doesn't coordinate with your historical setting.”

These are the people you trust to say, “Try something else … and be beautiful instead.”

Write Across Nebraska

In a newspaper article on why there’s a need for a writers’ forum like ours, I was quoted as saying, “Non-writers don’t understand.” My husband blanched when he read that. “It makes you sound kind of snotty.” Then it was I who blanched at his comment, but only because he was right. Though it wasn’t my intention at all, I now worried that readers would interpret the remark to mean that I considered non-writers incapable of processing the deep and complex concepts that writers deal with. What I was actually trying to say was that non-writers simply don’t care.

Anyone with a hobby knows on some level that it just doesn't interest other people on the same level. If it did, they’d be participating in it too. I try to listen politely when my violist friend expounds on performing folk versus classical music; likewise with a crafter friend who extols the virtues of 2-ply versus 3-ply sewing floss. But I just can’t get excited about those things as they do.

In the same way, when writers lament an exposition that’s just not getting off the ground, or a character who won’t adhere to our plot line, most people’s eyes glaze over. But these topics keep writers talking and keep us writing.

This very entry is a case in point. I'm writing it as part of an event called “Write Across Nebraska,” in which writers all over the state commit to writing over the weekend. They turn in a word count and the Nebraska Writers Guild tallies the total. It’s all done online and all based on the honor system. After pounding out a thousand words or more, the writer receives nothing more valuable than a certificate stating that they reached their word-count goal. I can see most of my non-writer friends shrugging their shoulders and saying, “What’s the point?”

At the risk of sounding sacrilegious, that’s a little like asking, “What’s the point of going to church? Can’t you pray by yourself? Can’t you read the Bible (or the Koran, the Talmud) at home?” Yes, you can, and yes, you should if you want a rich spiritual life. But there’s something about being in the presence of like-minded people, even if you’re not talking about your common interests, even if you’re not talking at all. It helps just to know they’re out there.

I arranged for local writers to meet at the public library for the event, and it made a real difference for me. Had I been home and on my own, it would have been too easy to quit. Midway through the day, I did wind up alone for a time, and was about to pack it in. Then a couple fellow writers showed up, and I got a second wind.

Realizing that at this moment there are others laboring toward a goal like your own makes you more committed to your task, it inspires you to keep on track, and brings you closer to your destination. And by the way, I surpassed that 1,000 word goal, coming in with a grand total of 1798. It was a good day.

1-800-SEE-PAGE

Traffic seems to be moving at a steady pace, with another hundred views every couple of weeks.
In honor of my 800th view, the next installment of EV (from pages 20-21) appears below.
As always, I would welcome comments.

She girds her loins with strength

and makes her arms strong.

She perceives that her merchandise is profitable

Proverbs 31:17, 18 (RSV)

Once they were airborne, Maggie was struck with the notion that God was punishing her for being too talkative over her life. Lately it didn’t matter whether she was on a commuter plane or a 747 or even this little two-seater, she wound up beside the nut who wanted to talk - about himself.

“So what did Paul say about me in his recommendation?”

“Truthfully, it wasn’t exactly a recommendation. He just mentioned you is all.”

“Well then, what did he mention about me?”

“Your name, Marc. He mentioned your name and nothing else.” And like a fool, she thought, I took a word from a near stranger as some sort of sign. “Doesn’t matter, though,” Maggie continued, stretching and yawning. “I had you pegged inside two minutes.”

“Oh really? Do tell."

"Well, you’re cocky and you’re lazy without the build or the looks to go with it.” She started to apologize for her bluntness, but decided he didn’t deserve it. "That means you come from money. Money that’s obviously slipped away one way or another. How am I doing so far?”

He glanced over at her with surprise and annoyance, but he admitted, “Not bad.”

“At your tender age, it’s not likely you’ve already lost it in bad investments, so my guess is that mummy and daddy disowned us over, oh, let’s see, what was it? Maybe they had to foot the bill for one too many fights at the old frat house? Got a girl in trouble, maybe - a girl they didn’t want to welcome into the family? Or did they just get tired of bailing you out of jail, replacing your smashed up sports cars-”

“Okay, yeah, you’re pretty close, close enough. You’re good at this.”

Maggie shrugged. “You’ve got ‘college drop-out’ written all over you.” It crossed her mind that he might have lost his money through an expensive drug habit, and maybe he was paying it off by delivering the stuff he used. She’d read somewhere that one in five people in Colombia was involved in the cocaine trade, at least indirectly. She decided she didn’t want to know where Marc fit into those numbers, and was glad when he changed the subject.

"Well then,” he said, “I'd have to say you have ‘graduate school’ written all over you."

Grudgingly, Maggie nodded. “Not bad for a guy who normally thinks with his nether regions. As I was saying before, I got licensed as a physician's assistant, and then got a degree in business...”

Marc started wagging his head to the rhythm of her voice as she ticked off her list. “Did I ask you for your résumé?”

“ ...I had a couple of summer internships for various agencies. One was in Ecuador, running a lab for the VISA program and…”

“I don’t remember asking for your résumé -”

“…then I got this sales position with Worthington Pharmaceuticals. I logged three thousand miles for sales calls last year, and the profit margin for my division went up twelve percent. My goal was to be head of sales before I was forty.”

“Gee, and I thought we had nothing in common. I myself handle pharmaceutical sales of a sort.” He delivered another grin. “Non-prescription strength."

How can I miss you if you won't go away?

I really enjoy my career in education, but teaching is an intense occupation psychologically and physically. By the time Memorial Day rolls around each year I am really ready to take a break from students, grading, lesson plans – all of it. But long before the fall semester begins, I'm missing my kids, my colleagues and the stimulation that the job entails. I return to the classroom refreshed and reinvigorated.

In a related vein, every summer my husband goes out of town for about ten days on business. It is hard on me to take over the many tasks he takes charge of around home, and it's much harder on him to work the long hours of this temporary job. But this little time spent apart is just enough to make each of us appreciate the another.

Similarly, I often get the question, “How do you deal with writers block?” My first line of defense is to take a break. When you feel like your characters aren't cooperating, that the plot is hopelessly tangled, and the words just won't come, oftentimes the best thing to do is walk away. It may be for an hour, it may be for a day, it may be longer. (In composing this entry, I've taken three mini-breaks of a minute or so.)

Let me clarify I'm saying to take a break from that particular piece. It's advisable to keep that writing part of the brain moving with other projects.

The inevitable question is, “What if I never return from that break?” and I admit that is a risk. My personal advice is don't let more than a couple of weeks go by before you at least look at it again. In completing Earthen Vessels, I sometimes put the work away for a year or more. I don't know if that works for everyone, but I think that's the way it had to be for me.

Almost without fail, with a sufficient separation from the work, the knots in your plot will unravel, the phrases will flow again, and your characters will call out to you, demanding to be heard. It brings to mind the old children's rhyme:

Little Bo Peep

has lost her sheep

and doesn't know where to find them.

Leave them alone

and they'll come home,

wagging their tails behind them.

View number (you guessed it) 700

The site passed view #700 last week, so here is another excerpt. In looking back at old posts, I realized last time was a repeat. Sorry. 
For some context on this next clip: Marc has told off a cocaine colleague who was harassing him about the delivery schedule. He's agreed to fly Maggie to a research station in the rainforest.

Marc was determined to get in the last word, but was left with nothing to say. “You don’t own the plane,” he shouted after the driver. “And you don’t own me!”

Marc pretended not to be jangled by that statement, but he knew the kinds of things that happened to those who disappointed the higher-ups. Taking the heat wasn’t just a figure of speech. He swallowed hard, then as casually as possible, he pulled out a cigarette and under his breath he muttered, “Glad we got this cleared up, amigo.”

Marc had felt compelled to engage in this brief but intense discussion with Mr. Striped Shirt to clarify who was calling the shots. With that done, he now felt compelled to break the resulting tension by engaging in a brief but intense reading session with a Playboy in the hangar’s lone bathroom. He burst through the office door and snatched his most recent issue (now five months old). On his way out he instructed Maggie over his shoulder. “Have your shit loaded in five minutes.” He glanced at the cover. “Okay, ten minutes, or I leave without you.”

True to his word, for once, Marc emerged after ten minutes to check on Maggie’s progress. “You about done, or what?” he asked, checking the scratched face of his Rolex.

"It never occurred to you to help?"

He looked a bit surprised. "Well…no," he answered honestly.

"It would speed things up," Maggie offered.

"What all have you got here anyway?"

She pointed at the boxes in turn. "That one has reference books, and the one beside it has equipment for collecting plant specimens. This one has personal stuff and the suitcase of course-“

"Save it, lady. I just want to know which is the lightest."

"Take your chances." Maggie picked up a box and carried it away.

When he caught up to her, Maggie eyed the Greek letters on the billed cap Marc now wore.

"I remember the TKE chapter on my campus," she said. "Beer-guzzling partiers who couldn't be bothered to find their way to class."

"Yeah, that's us," Marc nodded with fond remembrance. “What about you? You pledge a sorority way back in your college days?”

“It wasn’t the stone-age, and yes, I belonged to Pi Nu Delta. It’s actually an honorary for women in the sciences.”

"Not that I asked." Marc's cigarette bobbed between clenched lips as he spoke.

“You see, I started off in college wanting a career in medicine, but then I also developed an interest in sales and marketing, and I thought, 'This is just too crazy to work.' "

"Crazy," Marc agreed. He set down the crate of books and leaned against the plane. Maggie started back for more of her stuff, talking the whole way, and Marc decided to let her get the last load herself. He tuned her out and just watched her walking over and back. She might be kind of cute if she slimmed down just a little - and if she ever stopped yapping.

Maggie hoisted her suitcase onto the plane with a huff. "So what's a rotten kid like you doing in a tropical paradise like this?"

Marc gave a look of surprise. "I'm not a kid," he informed her. "I'm 21, legal in all fifty states."

"If you're still bragging about it, you're still a kid."

"How long since you were bragging about it?"

Maggie hesitated, but decided to answer. "Seven years, not that it's any of your business."

Marc calculated and concluded that at twenty-eight her bones were not so brittle they would break if he decided to jump them. He struggled to keep a straight face. “Given your medical background, are you concerned at all about catching jungle fever down here?”

“Jungle fever? You mean malaria? I had all my shots before I left.”

“No," he answered, practicing his sensuous stare on her as he moved closer. "I mean that burning feeling in your loins that comes over you when you get out in the jungle, where it’s hot and wet and wild." A strand of hair had fallen over her eye, and he gently reached out a finger to brush it back. He lowered his voice to a whisper, "Don’t you feel it?"

Maggie slapped his hand away and gave him a level stare. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Marc shrugged. “That line has worked before.”

Maggie shook her head. “Are you seriously trying to make me believe that just being in the jungle makes people ... makes them ...”

“Horny as hell, you bet,” Marc informed her, shaking off the sting in his hand. And in response to her skeptical look, he went on. “Hey, they don’t call it the torrid zone for nothing. And there ain’t no shot for that, honey, unless it’s a shot of-”

“I’m sure I’m immune,” Maggie interrupted. Still, she recalled the travel brochures she’d read all used words like “sultry” and “sensuous” and “untamed.”

“Nobody’s immune, sugar,” he told her. “Nobody."

The Internet: Endless Resource or Bottomless pit?

I went back to college in my 30s, just as the whole Internet thing was gaining ground. The first few times I had to research papers online, I would enter a search phrase and open the returns one by one to find that half of them were nothing like what I wanted. I would then notice that my search had yielded 80,000 results. It would take a lifetime just to glance at them all! I remember getting so overwhelmed at one point, I had to go to the ladies' room and have a little cry.

Years later I've acquired some online mastery, but once in a while my poor brain still feels assaulted by the sheer enormity of it all. It begins so simply: I have an idea so I sit down at the keyboard intending to write. Then I need clarification on a word or ideas for a more precise word choice, so I turn to an online dictionary or thesaurus. As I do so I get pop-up ads from outfits claiming they can improve my writing or my saleability. I might break down and open one up, and I wind up registering for an writing webinar that starts in an hour. As I sit through the webinar it reminds me that I promised to e-mail a writer friend regarding a critique of her work. I open my e-mail at the close of the webinar and my in-box is full of notices from online writers support groups or critique circles, editors and countless online articles on – of all things – heightening my online presence. At this point I've already spent three hours of my day online.

I've read these online articles and they say things like “write a blog” so I do that. Then I get e-mails offering to help me improve my blog.

And the writing I sat down to do hours ago? The objective that motivated all this? Lost. I ask myself, “Where does it end?” The answer, of course is, there is no end to the Internet.

 

600 Plus

The next excerpt from Earthen Vessels appears below, in honor of my 600th view. Enjoy pages 15 and 16. As always, comments are more than welcome.

It had been a chilly fifteen degrees the morning Maggie bundled up and headed for Denver International. When she reached Dallas that afternoon, the temperature there was close to fifty. She mailed her coat back home the following morning from the Mexico City airport, where the temperature was almost eighty. The temperature here in Miraflores was higher yet, with the humidity thickening every minute.

“Look,” she sighed, rubbing her eyes. “It’s just that…just that it’s already hot as hell out, and I’ve had about … about six hours sleep in the last thirty-six. All I want…I just...”

Marc was giving her a quizzical look, which she, in response, returned. She realized then that he was looking over her shoulder, out the window. Turning her gaze in the same direction, Maggie saw that a jeep had pulled up alongside Marc’s plane, and a man in a striped shirt was climbing out of the driver’s seat. Marc’s eyes were fixed on the striped shirt as he spoke.

“Wait here,” he ordered, before he strode out to the plane. Maggie immediately began wracking her brain: how could she make Marc change his mind and fly her to the research station? She saw the two men speaking for a moment before Marc pointed her way. She heard them start to shout at each other, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. Then her head snapped toward the ominous thud of Hector locking up the hatch on his own plane. Once he took off, Maggie knew she really would be stranded out here.

Panicking, Maggie burst out the door in Marc’s direction. “I can pay cash,” she blurted out before she realized how desperate she sounded. Striped shirt gave her an angry glare and so did Marc. He took her elbow roughly and spun her back the way she’d come.

“I told you to wait inside.” He flung open the door and nearly flung Maggie through it. She hardly noticed.

“And I’m telling you. I’ve got the money right here.” And then, right in front of him, she bent over to rifle through her bag on the floor. Marc had to look away to keep his mind on the business at hand. She straightened up and turned to show him a sheaf of bills pulled from the bag.

A protective impulse kicked in for Marc, an instinct he didn’t think he had. He folded his hand over hers, over the bills, and was about to tell the stupid chick to put away her money. When his palm came in contact with the cash, though, the impulse passed. The words that came out of his mouth then were, “Payment up front or no deal.” 

 

Leaving Maggie with strict instructions to stay inside the office, Marc went back to exchange a few parting words with Mr. Striped Shirt. (For security reasons, Marc’s associates made a point of not knowing one another’s names.)

Just so that nothing was lost in translation and just for emphasis, Marc planted both hands possessively on the fuselage of the twin engine as he spoke. “See, you don’t own this plane-“

“You don’t own this plane,” Striped Shirt interjected, his face like a stone.

“Okay, okay. Technically, legally, I don’t,” Marc conceded. “But I was the one who took the initiative to steal it from the technical, legal owner. So I decide for myself if I have time to take on a passenger before I make your deliveries, and I-”

“They’re your deliveries.” The expression was even more granite than before. “I done my part and I won’t take the heat for you after you fuck this up.” Without another word, the striped shirt then turned to move his jeep clear of the plane’s take-off path, another hint that Marc had better get a move on.

Marc was determined to get in the last word, but was left with nothing to say. “You don’t own the plane,” he shouted after the driver. “And you don’t own me!”

Wanted: an agent... to find me an agent

The logic train behind that heading is leaving the station now: Hop on, won't you?

Writing is what I do. I'd like to keep doing it. I'd like it to be all I do. In order for this to happen, I have to have readers. In order to have readers, I have to promote my book. Promoting the book means taking time from what I really want to do, which, as I mentioned, is writing. (Next stop: Publishire)

Wouldn't be nice if there were people to do some of that promotion for me? There are such people: they are called publishers. They connect with retailers, produce promotional materials, issue press releases, and get the book reviewed, so that it finds its way to the readers. (Next stop: Agentown)

Wouldn't it be nice if there were people to help authors and publishers find each other? There are such people: They are called literary agents. The agent directs all that promotion to publishers, convincing them to get the work to the readers. Wow, great! So now all I need to do now is get an agent. (Next stop: Netville)

In this day and age, finding an agent - like everything else – is mostly done via the Internet. You log on to search engines that direct you to websites that list literary agents, possibly hundreds of them. You log on to those sites and sift through the listings to find which ones will consider unpublished authors in your format and your genre. You log on to their sites to learn their submission procedure. Finally you submit your work and you wait. (Next stop: Mt. Patience)

Wouldn't it be nice if there were people to help authors find agents? Wouldn't it? Are there such people? I don't know. All I know is I'm spending a lot of time trying to find an agent to find me a publisher to find me some readers. I'm not complaining – I'm glad for the opportunity. It's just that, well, it's time I'd rather spend writing. (We've come full circle and this is the end of the line. As you exit, mind the gap.)

500 and counting!

It's so exciting to see how quickly this blog is growing! One hundred visits in just the last ten days! In observance of this latest development, here are the next few pages from Earthen Vessels. I hope you enjoy it.

... I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while.

2 Corinthians 7:8 (RSV)

Marc’s mind was suddenly racing: Could this woman be part of some vaguely remembered frat parties from two years ago? His memory was cloudy, and her yapping didn’t help.

"I'm Maggie Boyce,” she announced. Like he cared. "It's actually Mary Margaret, but almost nobody calls me..."

She wasn’t bad-looking, with platinum hair and bright green eyes. But she was a little old for him, Marc thought, pushing thirty for sure. And a bit too voluptuous for his taste. Then again, some nights it hadn’t mattered who the girl was. In any case, she couldn’t expect him to remember her name - could she? And this letter she mentioned - was he being sued? Destruction of private property. Breach of promise. Oh, God - paternity suit.

“Has a letter come in for me lately?” he asked Esteban urgently.

“¿Como?” Esteban yawned.

Hearing English again had thrown Marc off. “Una carta - ¿recibí una carta?”

Esteban lifted his arm limply toward Marc’s desk for a second before letting it fall against his leg. Marc saw just the girl, timidly pointing a finger at the desk behind him. Only now did he turn away from her, to rifle through the stacks of paper there.

“Actually,” she ventured, “it maybe doesn’t matter so...”

Then he came across an envelope he hadn’t noticed before. “¿Cuando lo llegó?” he shouted, studying the U.S. postmark. When did this arrive?

There was a pause and a sigh from the back room. “Mm ... una semana pasado - dos tal vez.”

“Two weeks ago?” Marc was raving as he ripped open the envelope. “Geez, if you don’t specifically ask, they don’t tell you...”

“It’s no big deal,” she tried again to interject. “It was just to sort of warn you I was coming.”

“...knows I don’t look through this junk ...” he mumbled as he pulled the paper out and unfolded it. Instead of reading it, he glanced up at her. This was not a legal notification of any kind - he knew, he’d seen enough of them. It was just a hand-written note from a - he flipped it over - from a Paul Schiffler.

“I got your name from Paul Schiffler,” the girl was saying. “He said you ran an air taxi down here, that you gave him a lift several months ago. You transported his research samples sometimes.”

At last Marc could breathe a sigh of relief. This ditzy chick had taken five minutes of his time just to say that she was a business referral. And what was she chattering about now?

“You see, I connected with Paul on the Internet and he said he'd been down here, and I said I wanted come too, and well, he mentioned your name." She paused here for a breath.

He looked at her blankly. "And..?"

She glared at him. “Okay, fine. This isn't a social call,” she said, finally getting down to business. “I need a lift into the interior right away,” she said, pulling out a map. “To a research station. It’s right on the map here.” She pointed, but he didn’t have to look.

“No can do,” he said flatly. He decided to take a load off and look over this letter after all. The handwriting was an effort to read, so he just scanned for key words. “...referring a client .... Maggie Boyce ...” Now why did that name sound familiar?

“You’d be back here in a matter of hours,” the girl was saying.

“I said I can’t,” he emphasized each word. “I got shipments to make. I’m out of here - north to Guatemala by tonight.” He went back to the letter. Frankly, not professionally qualified and emotionally ... if you can talk her out of it ...

"Oh, oh, I see,” her voice dripped with sarcasm. “Well, in that case, I guess I’ll just hang around here in the middle of nowhere doing nothing, until that cargo pilot comes back sometime this week or next...” He looked up again from the page. Was she still here? He was trying to enjoy the first letter he’d gotten in months. “...since it’s too damned inconvenient for you to help me out!”

Her voice rose a little with each word she spoke so that she ended with a shout. He looked a little surprised and let a smile escape one corner of his mouth. This woman, he could see, was not about to be talked out of anything.

In trying to finish the last paragraph, he reached the words that stopped even him cold. Mother ... six weeks ago ... now her sister ... cancer ...

And don't sweat the mushy stuff

(Gentlemen, you may want to change the channel)

 
A member of my local writing group has amazed us all with the suspense novel she is crafting. She is kind and quiet and a devoted Christian, but she writes so convincingly for the maniac killer in her story that we find ourselves eying her suspiciously. Recently she put out an e-mail call for help to critique her most recent efforts. I wondered if she had finally hit a block in the make-your-skin-crawl department. “This time it's really dicey,” she said. “This time it's ... the mushy stuff.”

Right away I knew exactly what she meant. Many a potential (female?) author gushes at the prospect of penning breath-taking love scenes. These are some of the most pleasurable scenarios of adult life, after all. To fabricate such fantasies in fiction ought to be nearly as good as the real thing. Right?

Wrong. I maintain that love scenes some of the more difficult aspects of fiction writing. You start with something that is, by nature, spontaneous, but you have to script it and choreograph it and then turn it back into something that you hope is spontaneous. Again. Real-life romance is all entertainment and emotion (with some physical thrown in if you get lucky). But writing romance is intellectual and it is work.

Then you worry: Will I embarrass my family? Will I shock my co-workers? (I work at a parochial school) And will I face the question, “Is this based on real life (wink-wink)?”

When the TV movie The Thornbirds came out, female viewers just melted over the steamy bits. However, Richard Chamberlain insisted in an interview that love scenes are difficult for actors as well, partly for the reasons I listed above. As an author, I'm glad that I at least don't have to worry about wig and costume malfunctions, and I don't have to personally, physically bring my story to life in front of a viewing audience.

The happy news is that with fictional romance, as with real world romance, when it's good, it's really good.

Celebrating a milestone!

Total views for this blog just passed 400! I know that may not seem like much to some, but I'm so excited, I've decided to share an excerpt from the very beginning: First book, Parte Uno, Chapter one, page one.
Enjoy. I'd love to hear comments.

O, that I had wings like a dove,

For then would I fly away and be at rest.

Lo, then would I wander far off and remain in the wilderness.

I would hasten my escape from the storm and the tempest.

Psalm 55:6, 7 & 8 (KJV)

Maggie just had to get some sleep. After all the air miles she'd logged on the job in the last two years, she thought she could sleep on any plane, anywhere, under any circumstances. But the last day and a half were a blur of stopovers, layovers and weather delays. And all this on top of a set of jangled nerves. This latest leg on the journey had been the worst. It wasn’t even a passenger plane, but a cargo plane. The pilot said his cargo often included wild animals, which he transported from the jungle to zoos or wildlife refuges. The plane was smelly and loud, the seats were hard, and the fee was excessive - and it was the only ride she could get this way for days. Maggie grabbed at it.

She’d gotten no sleep the previous night in Bogotá, and no sleep on the cargo plane, thanks to the pilot chattering non-stop in a Spanish she could hardly keep up with. So it was with dry, blood shot eyes that Maggie looked around at what was laughably called an airport on the map. The mid-morning sun illuminated a lone plane, a Cessna twin engine, on the concrete. There were a few little buildings dusted with dirt from the airstrip - the rickety little hangar, a few tiny outbuildings and the one against which the pilot, Hector Ramos, had stacked her things. The sign over the door read Oficina.

Upon entering, it took a moment for Maggie’s eyes to adjust to the building’s dim interior. Then the sight of the young man behind the desk made her hopeful. With sandy hair, fair complexion, and expensive sports shoes casually crossed atop the desk, he had the look of a fellow American about him. Maybe she’d found the person she’d been looking for right off the bat. Maybe this trip would go all right after all.

“Excuse me,” she said. He lifted his eyes from the magazine he was reading, but otherwise did not move. “Good morning,” Maggie continued. No answer. Apparently he was a local after all, though he didn’t look like a typical Colombian.

“Buenos dias,” she tried, but still there was no reaction from him. She had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but she haltingly tried one of the local Indian languages she’d tried to learn. She got nothing but a confused look.

“¿Se habla ingles aqui?” she finally asked. Does anyone here speak English?

“Only me,” he answered in a low Texas drawl, but his face remained as impassive as before.

“Why didn’t you say so?” she asked, exasperated.

“Why didn’t you ask?”

“Couldn’t you tell I’m an American?” she asked.

“Couldn’t you tell I am?”

Maggie started to answer, but held her tongue, reminding herself that she needed something from this man. She drew a shaky breath to calm her shot nerves. She would be pleasant if it killed her. “I’m looking for a Marc Hansen,” she said in a controlled voice.

“Never heard of him,” he answered.

Skeptical after their first exchange, Maggie didn't take this answer at face value. “Joe Hansen?” she tried. He only shook his head, shaking the trendiest of sunglasses perched atop his head. Maggie rummaged through her bag and produced a slip of paper. “How about Marc Johansen?” she asked, reading the note she'd scrawled there.

“Hey! That’s me!” Only now did he bother to take his feet off the grimy desk. His rickety swivel chair groaned as he turned to face her.

“You weren’t expecting me?” she asked. “You didn’t get the letter?”

“Mail’s a little slow out here,” he drawled.

The mail’s not the only thing, Maggie thought. Then when he finally bothered to really look at her, she saw a mild panic spread over his face. She didn't know why that should be, but she tried to explain. “Well, the letter’s not all that -”

“Esteban!” he shouted. Had she done something wrong? Was he cursing at her? “Esteban!” he repeated, jumping to his feet. The sound of shuffling feet came from the little room behind Marc, and it started to make sense - in a twisted sort of way. A lanky young man - Esteban, she supposed - now leaned against the back door frame. At the sound Marc asked over his shoulder, “I need to know,” he said, “Did I get a letter?”

***

God is in the Details

Punctuation may seem like one of those “small” things we're not supposed to sweat. I often hear would-be writers describe past English teachers as “comma Nazis” who beat down the creative impulses of their students. “Who cares if I put a dash or a semi-colon there?” these aspiring authors rant. “What difference does it make if the quotation mark goes after the period?”

I'm sure there are writing instructors out there who do ignore lyrical prose and discourage enthusiastic students, so intent are they on ferreting out stray semi-colons and exposing errant ellipses. But if we let them, these fuss-budgets can help us bring clarity to our writing.

Allow me an analogy. Let's say you invite friends to dinner because you're a fantastic cook with a vast repertoire of recipes. However, after they arrive you tell them if they want clean plates, they'll have to wash them themselves. Also, they'll be eating with plates on their laps because your table is towering with junk. After all, you're too busy creating a delicious meal to be bothered with details like clearing off the table or providing clean forks. No matter how good the food tastes, your guests' enjoyment of the event is seriously hindered because you didn't care enough to complete the experience.

Likewise, we puff ourselves up saying we're expressing important ideas, forming flowing phrases built on precisely right words. We can't be bothered with quotation marks and colons. But you've invited a reader into your world and your writing. Don't make them to guess what you mean or figure out what you intend. That takes them out of the experience.

Don't sweat the small stuff

A decade or so ago, I added the following to my collection of favorite quotes: 

“Any idiot can face a crisis, it is this day-to-day living that wears us out.” (Anton Chekhov)

I think of this quote often, because it's so true. A child goes missing, a car veers off the road and we hear,

“I barely looked away and suddenly he was gone.”

“I took my eyes off the road for just a second and the car was up a pole.”

How often do we hear of terrible fights breaking out between people who later say, “It was all over the silliest thing.” When the big stuff hits, some mysterious reserve within us kicks in to handle it, but the little things often make us the most emotional.

Case in point: Recently I had a heated argument with a co-worker about whether to type one space or two after a period. It's an argument I've had with others before, and a casual glance at this entry will tell you where I land on the subject. It's not as though it even matters, really, but it makes me crazy when I see it done in what I learned was the “old-fashioned way.”

I've got lots of specific thoughts on the virtues and pitfalls of punctuation, and will post them all in due time, but for today, I guess I just want to say, “Watch out for the little things.”

Oh, my long neglected blogspot!

I won't bore anyone by detailing all the reasons I haven't posted anything for so long. It comes down mostly to some minor health issues and being crazy busy with school, and both situations seem to be remedying themselves now.

The only thing I've written in months is the little essay below. The topic is timely for a couple of reasons. I created it for a student who needed a serious shot of confidence before delivering a major speech. Also, the spring flowers are starting to bud just now, including the variety I've detailed in the essay. Enjoy.

Autumn Joy

About 25 years ago, Robert Fulghum made a ton of money from his book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. As an avid gardener, I believe that all I need to know I learn in the garden. Here are some of the things I have learned:

• Your leaves and stems can withstand a lot damage if you have strong roots.
• Sometimes you have to cut a plant down to make it grow up.
• You can't force a plant to bloom before its time.

When I first got my own yard and flowerbeds, I tried hard to learn how to care for the plants, and I had moderate success. But there was one little plant that seemed to resist all my efforts.

 

It was one of the first to show buds in the spring, but then it just sort of sat there, no matter what I did. What I didn't understand at the time was that this plant was doing just what it's supposed to do.

The flower is called Autumn Joy. It makes its first appearance in March, then bides its time, masquerading as a humble little clump of green. Then finally in August, when most other flowers have died back, this thing shoots out the sturdiest of stems.

Because its stems and buds form a perfect inverted bowl shape, it never needs pruning. Along about September, its blossoms appear in beautiful purples and violets. With a snip of a few stems, it practically arranges itself in a vase.

Over the years I've found it will grow under in sun or shade, drought or flood, rising above whatever hardship it is exposed to. In fact, the only problem it has is that its stems and blossoms are so abundant that it sometimes collapses under their weight. When that happens the plant has to be divided and made into more plants.

After some time, my yard was covered in Autumn Joy. The only thing to do was share it. I've given away more of these plants than I've been able to keep. It's been a privilege to see this beauty spread far and wide.

I believe you are like this flower. It has taken a while, but those sturdy stems have branched out to support vivid blossoms. The only thing you have to do now is share that beauty with others around you.

Good News / Bad News

The good news is that the high school speech team I coach is growing by leaps and bounds.
The bad news is this means even less time and energy to devote to writing.
But it puts me in mind of the opening line of the Serenity Prayer: 
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
I can't change that fact that my focus has to be on coaching right now, so I accept it.
And the truth is, I enjoy coaching. I just with there were more hours in the day sometimes.

In any case, I'm sharing another excerpt from the first novel. I'm trying to choose bits from near the start because they require less set-up and don't spoil the rest of the story for those who choose to purchase and read it (fingers crossed). This is from page 14. Maggie is trying to hire Marc to pilot her to a research station in the rainforest. Her alternate ride, Hector, is leaving and she is running out of options.

   "It’s already hot as hell out,"Maggie whined, "and I’ve had about … about six hours sleep in the last thirty-six. All I want…I just...”
   Marc was giving her a quizzical look, which she, in response, returned. She realized then that he was looking over her shoulder, out the window. Turning her gaze in the same direction, Maggie saw that a jeep had pulled up alongside Marc’s plane, and a man in a striped shirt was climbing out of the driver’s seat. Marc’s eyes were fixed on the striped shirt as he spoke.
   “Wait here,” he ordered, before he strode out to the plane.
Maggie immediately began wracking her brain: how could she make Marc change his mind and fly her to the research station? She saw the two men speaking for a moment before Marc pointed her way. She heard them start to shout at each other, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. Then her head snapped toward the ominous thud of Hector locking up the hatch on his own plane. Once he took off, Maggie knew she really would be stranded out here.
   Panicking, Maggie burst out the door in Marc’s direction. “I can pay cash,” she blurted out before she realized how desperate she sounded. Striped shirt gave her an angry glare and so did Marc. He took her elbow roughly and spun her back the way she’d come.
   “I told you to wait inside.” He flung open the door and nearly flung Maggie through it. She hardly noticed.
   “And I’m telling you. I’ve got the money right here.” And then,right in front of him, she bent over to rifle through her bag on the floor. Marc had to look away to keep his mind on the business at hand. She straightened up and turned to show him a sheaf of bills pulled from the bag.
A protective impulse kicked in for Marc, an instinct he didn’t think he had. He folded his hand over hers, over the bills, and was about to tell the stupid chick to put away her money. When his palm came in contact with the cash, though, the impulse passed. The words that came out of his mouth then were, “Payment up
front or no deal.”

   Leaving Maggie with strict instructions to stay inside the office, Marc went back to exchange a few parting words with Mr. Striped Shirt. (For security reasons, Marc’s associates made a point of not knowing one another’s names.) Just so that nothing was lost in translation and just for emphasis, Marc planted both hands possessively on the fuselage of the twin engine as he spoke. “See, you don’t own this plane-“
   “You don’t own this plane,” Striped Shirt interjected, his face like a stone.
   “Okay, okay. Technically, legally, I don’t,” Marc conceded. “But I was the one who took the initiative to steal it from the technical, legal owner. So I decide for myself if I have time to take on a passenger before I make your deliveries, and I-”
   “They’re your deliveries.” The expression was even more granite than before. “I done my part and I won’t take the heat for you after you fuck this up.” Without another word, the striped shirt then turned to move his jeep clear of the plane’s take-off path, another hint that Marc had better get a move on.
   Marc was determined to get in the last word, but was left with nothing to say. “You don’t own the plane,” he shouted after the driver. “And you don’t own me!”

If you can't find what you want, build your own!

   I've heard of people who can't find a product or service they want, and so they go on to invent or design what they want. Earthen Vessels is a little like that. I wanted to read a very specific type of fiction and couldn't find an author or work that was what I had in mind. I was searching for a perfect balance, a little like Goldilocks [The first bowl was too hot, the second bowl was too cold, but this one is just right]. 
   I wanted it to be sexy but not raunchy, light and amusing without being comical. I wanted to share a message or two without being preachy. You don’t have to read with a dictionary beside you, but it still engages your grey matter. It has a romantic element, but it’s not a romance in the traditional sense.
   When people ask, that’s what I say is special about the book: it’s a balanced mix of many great story-telling elements. 
To wit: 
This is from about page 100. Luis and Maggie are off in their own respective dream-lands.




That night Luis lay in his bed, unable to sleep, listening for every sound Maggie made from the other side of the thin curtain. When he did manage to get to sleep, he dreamed that he was once again making his way to the sound of a woman’s scream - or was it a man who made that terrible noise? He came upon Maggie on the ground with Raul on top of her. Instead of a shard of glass, she held an arrow at his back. Luis wasn’t sure what she was wearing - something with feathers. He didn’t say anything, but she’d heard him approach, and she looked straight at him.
“I came to rescue you,” he informed her. Just then she pushed Raul off of her with the strength of several men. He yelped as his body was hurled several feet up, and he landed with a thud on his back. He groaned loudly and crawled off into the jungle.
“Rescue me?” Her voice was full of annoyance. “What you’ve done is interrupt me.”
“I have?” he asked, flabbergasted.
“Now you scared him off.”
“I did?”
“But never mind,” she smiled. “You’ll do just as well.”
“I will?”
“Maybe better,” she purred, and by the time she had her arms wrapped around his neck, they were inside his house, in front of the fire. Her kiss was wonderful, but still he pulled back, startled. He fell backwards, landing on his bed with her straddling him. He woke up in a sweat a few minutes later, his heart beating wildly and his head feeling light.


Maggie drifted off to sleep watching tiny papers of ash float up the chimney from the fire. The next thing she saw was the letter she had written her father, floating on a tropical breeze. She scrambled to retrieve it, but her hands were bound again. Finally she managed to grab it and open it. Instead of telling her father not to worry, that she’d be back in a matter of weeks, the note simply read, “Dear Dad, I’m dead.” Then she looked out the nose of the plane just as it started to skim the treetops. On impact of the crash, she bolted upright in a cold sweat. The fire of the wreckage blurred back into the fire in the hearth. The rumble of the thunder that had awakened her was dying down outside.
God, what a nightmare! Maggie put her hands to her face. She’d dreamed that she’d taken off in a huff to some remote, third-world hell hole, cut off from civilization. With a trembling sigh, she lowered her hands and looked around her. What she saw was not her Denver apartment, and not her bedroom in her parents’ home, but an almost primitive little house.
Oh God.
She kept trying to wake herself up and finally admitted that she was awake. She blinked a couple times, hard, but the scenery did not change. This, she realized, was no dream.
She swung her feet to the floor and started to rock almost hysterically. Her first impulse was to comfort herself with some food. But there was no freezer here, which meant no Dove bars, and no refrigerator meant no cheesecake. In fact, the only food in the house was a few raw eggs, some flour and a blackened banana. Where, Maggie wondered, was a woman to find comfort?