Change is Good

I'm participating in another flash fiction project this month. +Becket Morgan put it together for the +Flash Fiction Project. This time, we have three images to incorporate into our pieces.  If you've never tried these sorts of prompts, I highly recommend it.  It helps push your mind in new directions, which can be wonderful for your life as well as your writing. Here are the images we're using this time (see below the pictures for the piece by me):

Charlie's mother always said, "Children will change your life."  He understood that, he supposed, in the general sort of way you understand anything you haven't experienced for yourself. It made sense. Adding new people to your life changes things. Even just a new friend, or a new boss. And a child, that was someone who couldn't take care of him or herself without you.

So Charlie told her that he liked his life, so he guessed he just wouldn't have any.  She'd shaken her head at him wordlessly and handed him his hockey bag and he'd run into the Sportsplex to get his gear on. That was the last time he ever saw her. Her minivan was hit by a wide turning truck and suddenly, Charlie was an orphan, just two months after high school graduation.

His mother had planned well, and Charlie still went to college as they had planned, still played for the team, as they had planned. He looked for her in the stands every game, and it broke his heart over again every time that she wasn't there. But he went on, as people do. He graduated. He got a job.

He wasn't good enough to make a career of hockey.  He was a good, solid player, but just didn't have that extra something.  He knew that, had planned for it.  But, still he loved it.  He played in the adult league at the Sportsplex he grown up playing at.

From time to time, he'd think about that last conversation with his mother and wonder.  But he had not married. He hadn't met anyone that felt right. Children didn't seem likely. Even though he'd always said he didn't want them, that made him sad somehow.

Maybe that was why he decided to take the job when he was asked to coach the Rink Rats, preschoolers.  He was looking for that change his mother had promised him.

Change came in the form of Ryan Whitaker.  He was the littlest guy on a team of little guys.  He had a wide face that became even wider when he smiled.  He worked hard for his age.  When Charlie came in to skate or practice, Ryan was always there, a look of fierce concentration on his face that Charlie recognized because he'd worn it himself. 

One day, Ryan brought his mother to one of Charlie's games so she could meet his hero.  The game had been a good one, and Charlie was drenched in sweat when he pulled off his helmet and stumped over to the stands dripping wet slush from his skates and uniform to let Ryan introduce them.  "Charlie! Charlie! This is my mom, Annie."  Charlie took her hand, apologizing for his post-game stink. She smiled. She smiled and his heart fluttered in a strange way.  He asked if they would wait. He wanted to take them out for ice cream.

She said yes.  Some months later, she said yes again, in front of their family and friends.  Charlie swore he saw his mother in the pews, just for a second, clasping her hands under her chin like she used to in the stands. She was proud of him.

Novel as Unintentional Autobiography

I finished a rewrite of my first novel a few days ago (look out publishing world--submissions coming your way!).  Reading it again, I realized again how much of myself can be in a piece of writing even when I don't know that I am writing about myself.

I already knew that the germ of this particular novel came from my own life. When my littlest child was still just a baby, I took her grocery shopping. I had parked near the cart corral, so I placed her in her car seat and walked the few feet to put the cart away.  On the way back to the car, I had this sort of day-mare in which I got hit by a car and she was left in the car alone. That was the starting thought that became His Other Mother.

I gave Sherry, my main character a few things that came from me. She's female, not too much younger than me. I made her a middle school teacher. I gave her a love of baking and the use of it as a stress reliever. Those are all me. But other than that, I'm not much like Sherry.

Still, as I wrote the first draft, I realized at some point that some of the relationship dynamics between Sherry and her husband, Kirk, were similar to those between me and my first husband. Apparently, I had some things to work out and understand about how that relationship had gone. (It ended better for me than it did for Sherry and Kirk).

Sherry wasn't necessarily mentally ill when I started writing the novel, but along the way, it became clear that she was schizophrenic.   There are some people in my life that live with schizophrenia.  Apparently, I had some things to work out and understand about that, too. Even Sherry and Kirk's fertility struggles echo somewhat the struggles of some people who are close to me.

As I wrote the second draft, I found some of my ambivalence about organized religion and medical practice coming to the surface.  Apparently, my issues with doctors run deep--they're coming out in the second novel, too. 

I haven't decided what all this means. In the moment of writing, autobiography is about the furthest thing from my mind. I've never set out to tell my own life story, and Sherry's story is definitely not my own in that sense.  My own life, thankfully, lacks the kind of conflict that makes a good novel. But it was surprising and a little disconcerting to find all this personal truth in my fiction.

It has made me regard the novels I am reading a little differently as well. What issues is the author working through in these pages? Does my enjoyment of the book reflect my own issues?  How many novels could really be called "An Autobiography of my Subconscious"? Apparently, mine can.

Mayday! It's May

http://www.readthespirit.com/religious-holidays-festivals/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2013/04/May-Day-1936-Georgia.jpg

Ah, spring.  The season of hormones and drama in middle school. Just in time for end of year testing, too.

My sixth graders are weepy. Sometimes they don't even know why. My seventh graders are wired or angry. They don't know why either. The eighth graders are either so sleepy they seem inert, or so excited about moving on to high school that they can't contain themselves.  Sometimes both at the same time. They can't tell me why.

They're all doing all of this for the first time. They have no idea what's going on. It's confusing. It's wild.  I've been here for years, watching, and even I don't understand this energy, this strange movement in the middle school symphony we call May. 

Couple this with where teachers are at this time of year--stretched thin, burnt out, worn out, exhausted, stressed out, frustrated, frazzled.  It can be a very difficult combination.  Tempers flare easily in May.  Even though it has rained a lot, you should assume the kindling is dry and tread very lightly in this forest.  The slightest spark and we've got a conflagration on our hands.

Maybe it's not a coincidence that May Day when written as one word (mayday!mayday!) is a cry for help. 

Prisoners to the Test

Today I was held prisoner in a small, poorly lit and rather airless room with five other captives, all quite young.  Arrangements were made for the younger captives to have access to restroom facilities, but the two older women in the room were not allowed to leave.  No one had access to food or drink until after 1:00 p.m. The young captives were forced to take a seemingly endless test while the older captives watched, ensuring that they stayed on task.

Yeah, that's what we call End of Grade Testing. 

Physically, emotionally, intellectually, and other -ly you want to add . . .it's torture.  If it lasted longer, I'd think I'd have a case for having my rights under the Geneva Conventions violated.

I wonder if anyone's done a study on teacher attrition and end of grade testing. 

So here's my brief soapbox about End of Grade Testing:  it's a waste of time and money.  You could garner the same information about student comprehension by asking their teachers.  We're already being paid (embarrassingly little in North Carolina, but still, paid).  The whole industry has sprung up around the idea that somehow the people we entrust to educate our children cannot then assess them.

Today, my theory is sexism. Teaching is a female-dominated field. Government is a male-dominated field . . .and it doesn't even represent the best that the male half of our species has to offer.  If we just trusted teachers to do their jobs and gave them the resources to do it, we could drop the whole thing.

Check back soon for other conspiracy theories and railings at the heavens. There's a lot more testing to go.

Now We Are Six

Now we are six.  We are missing two teeth and like to stick our tongue in the hole and roll it up like a taco.  If we knew how, we'd blow bubblegum bubbles through it.

When we were a baby, and had no teeth, we'd get tired and bounce our head against mom or dad's shoulder making a bwah-bwah-bwah sound.   Woodpeckering, mom and dad called it and smiled.

Now we are six.  Our legs are so long and slender, they look untenable for support, yet we run like the wind laughing.  Sometimes, we stretch our arms behind us and run like the Ninja Turtles.

When we were one, and not yet walking, we bounced around the house on our knees, a comical method of movement that amazed and dismayed the adults around us.

Now we are six, and we are very punny. We are a word-nerd in the making, loving to learn new words, even better if we can read them by ourselves. We recently made a joke that made sense.

When we were two and three, we loved knock-knock jokes, but we didn't get them. We'd say, "Knock knock," and when you'd say, "Who's there!" we'd say something random like "hot dog in a bucket!" and run away laughing.

Now we are six and we are heartbreakingly beautiful in the way that only six year old girls can be. That's no surprise, though, we've always been amazing.

Logan Don't Wear Tights

From

So, I'm writing a superhero novel. My first novel (the one I'm trying to finish a rewrite of this week) is a much more literary endeavor, and while I think that it has merit (obviously, or I wouldn't give it all this work in hopes of publishing it), it's been a hard one to write. This time, I'm looking for something more fun to write, a lighter path into inner darkness, so to speak.

So, superheroes are on my brain.  That, and all the trailers for the new Wolverine movie all over the socials, leads me to think about my favorite comic book guy, who may or may not be a superhero.  Logan. Or Wolverine. Or James Fowler.  He has different names. But to me, he's Logan.

Logan's been getting a lot of attention lately. Mainly because a tall, handsome Australian man has been playing him in big-budget movies.  But, that's not Logan. Don't get me wrong. I loves me some Hugh Jackman, and he does a good job in the role, as good as someone who is too young, handsome and too charming for the part can do (and who is there old enough without looking old and steely enough? There's a reason he was created on paper).  I'll see the movies and enjoy them.

But Logan, my Logan, would laugh at them, if he could be bothered to watch them.  He'd spit out a hunk of the cigar he'd been chewing and grimace at me with the juice dripping into his whiskers and ask if they really thought he could be tamed and kept on a leash like that. He'd call me kid as he said it and mean no irony. He'd think I was a kid. Probably an annoying one. He'd somehow seem to look down on me even though I'm four inches taller than him.

My Logan wears a white tee shirt, blue jeans and work boots. His hair and beard are wild, resembling an animal's fur as much as human hair. My Logan is the one whose finger-knives cut him every time he unleashes them and who is not stopped by that.  He would definitely, not ever in your wildest dreams, Bub, don a yellow jumpsuit just because he chose to make a temporary alliance with some do-gooders who happened to be fighting a fight he also wanted to fight.

As the man himself says, "I'm the best there is at what I do, but what I do best isn't very nice." Damn straight.

How to Lie to Yourself Honestly

I'm rewriting my first novel this week.  While writing or first-drafting is something I can do in small chunks of time, 15 minutes here, an hour there, rewriting requires a longer chunk of time, focus.  At least that's what I've been telling myself as I played around in my new novel instead of taking on the work of rewriting that first one and making it complete. But maybe I'm lying to myself, avoiding the difficult task in favor of the lighter, honeymoon stage I'm in with the second novel.

The first novel (working title: His Other Mother) is a dark thing, exploring mental illness, infertility, marriage.  Writing the first draft, I was surprised to discover that I had, in part, been writing about my first marriage.  While the characters and the plot have nothing to do with the events or people in my lives, some of the marriage dynamics definitely did.  It's always interesting to discover what my brain has been doing behind my back, the devious ways it finds to make me confront the things I'd rather not.

Rewriting that novel now, I find that I have issues to work out regarding religion and religious leaders.  That's not so surprising in a thinking person in the twenty-first century. But striking me today is the theme of self-deception, the lies we tell ourselves to make it through. 

Lying to yourself seems like a bad thing, but I don't know that it always is.  Am I lying to myself when I put on a brave face so I can do the thing that frightens me? I'm refusing to acknowledge the truth of my fear. But I do it in good cause, to help myself take the first step. Surely, that's not the same as lying to myself about addictions or bad choices I'm making. Is it?

Sherry Morgan, my main character, knows that what she doing is wrong at some level. But, she's quite good at talking herself around morality, rewriting reality to make it allowable to do the things she wants to do, despite all evidence to the contrary.  Sometimes she almost convinces me, her author. The brain gymnastics are amazing.  In real life, as well as in fiction.

It puts me in mind of a poem I studied in grad school, "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop.  It's a masterpiece in self-deception. You can feel the persona willing herself to believe the story she has concocted (this loss is no big deal in the scheme of things), and, that, at the same time, she knows it's a pretty lie. But a pretty lie she needs if she's to get through this. A pretty lie she has to let herself, even force herself to believe.

My character is no Elizabeth Bishop. She's just a woman who wants to be a mother and can't. But she can fool herself like nobody's business. And it takes a pretty elaborate fiction to fool her. So she writes one for herself (and then I record it for us and try to make it into good fiction for all you good people).

I can't tickle myself, because I know it's coming and surprise is part of the sensation.  But, I can delude myself and somehow exercise control over my own introspection to the point that I can keep myself from examining the hole in the story I've concocted.  So, on a small, and hopefully healthier scale, I am as big a liar as Sherry. I'm just more honest about it.