Month: February 2012

Red Writing Hood: Pick a Number

~ riggledo ~ 10 Comments

This weeks Red Writing Hood prompt was a little different… or was it totally the same…

They used one that they did a while back, before I started doing the prompts so it’s new to me, though I liked it.  They offered four categories, Character, Setting, Time and Situation.  Each category had 10 numbered options.  The idea is, you pick a number for each category and then whatever corresponds to that number you include in your piece.

I used random.org’s random number generator to select the four numbers I needed and I ended up with:

  1. An elderly woman
  2. In a Park
  3. In December
  4. Someone has just gone to the doctor

Henrietta Lewis sat on a bench in the middle of Central Park on the coldest day anyone could remember.  Even for December in New York it was bitterly cold and the usual hordes of city dwellers seen scurrying through the park were hiding in the shelter of their steam heated, barely warm walk-up apartments, bundled in layers and nestled under blankets.  One would have to be crazy, or desperate, to be out on such a day, but there sat Henrietta, unaffected by the cold.

Pigeons shuttled around her feet, hoping the old woman would drop some crumbs or seed, but she didn’t notice as her gaze was cast upward, toward the sky and she took in the iconic sky-line, the grey sky above, the sun shining behind the clouds.  She watched as her breaths floated away like a lifting fog.

Over the tops of the trees she could see the upper floors of the building that housed the treatment center and she smiled as bittersweet tears trickled down her face, threatening to crystallize in the freezing air before they could fall.  For so long, the news had been grim.  While it hadn’t spread, the lump wasn’t shrinking and the numbers showed no signs of improvement.  Once her course had been completed the Doctors sent her home to wait, to wonder, and to worry.

Henrietta thought of all the times she’d sat on this bench.  For months she had come to this spot to sit and watch the living, live.  Life happened all around her even as she was slowly dying.  She always wanted to enjoy the world for a time while she waited for the drugs, already coursing through her veins, to wreak their havoc on her system.  Within hours, she’d be too sick to move, retching and heaving until she was certain there was nothing left.

It had been summer then.  The days sweltering as waves of heat rose from the baking pavement.  The heat felt good to her, though, warming her bones and thin blood.  There was never a shortage of young, healthy, living people enjoying the heat.  The shirtless college boys playing Frisbee or touch football in the grass; the girls in their short shorts and bikini tops roller blading along the jogging trail; the hot dog and peanut vendors hocking their wares with their sweat soaked shirts sticking to their backs.  She would watch the activity and lament the world she was sure she would soon leave.

But today, as she sat in the familiar spot in the park, there were no shirtless boys or bikini clad girls, there were no hotdogs or peanuts.  There was nothing but quiet stillness with only the pigeons to distract her and as the tears freely fell, a smile began to spread across her face and she turned her face to the heavens as she dreamed of the many summers to come when she would sit in this spot, amongst the living, knowing that she would be one of them.

In Over My Head

~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

So I had the second meeting of the writing workshop/class/group/thingy, last night.  I’ve been really looking forward to it and I’m glad I’m doing it, but I’ve been in for a few surprises.

Last week, we met at the leader’s beautiful house in San Francisco where we chatted amongst our selves for a little while, waiting for everyone to arrive and settle in and then the group leader gave us copies of some pages from a book she had.  After she passed the pages around to everyone she began to read selected sections of them out loud to us.  Following along with her and trying to keep up, I wasn’t able to read them myself and I wasn’t able to fully process what they were saying and what I took away from the endeavor was:

“Secrets are lies and lies are truth and truth comes out in writing in the form or your secrets.”

Or something like that.

Then she told us to take a few minutes and write about a secret.

I really didn’t know what to make of that.  I’ve already told the biggest secret I was keeping.

Before we left for the night we selected which weeks we were going to have our stuff read and critiqued by the group.

Over the last week, I received writing samples from three of the people in the group and was expected to read and critique each sample.  I didn’t really know what that meant, exactly, and as I mentioned yesterday, I found that harder than I imagined I would.

I received a chapter from a memoir which was competently written with lots of descriptive imagery and scenery and even showed a bit of growth in the person the memoir is about, but ultimately was just a piece of a larger work.  I wasn’t personally interested in the location and history of the place in which the story happens.  The feeling and sentiment of the character is moving, but not overly compelling to me.  I marked a few typos here and there, indicated an analogy I really liked, but mostly had very few comments to make.

I received a short story, 15 pages, the first half of which I really enjoyed.  Beautiful locale, really well written, with just a couple of stumbling points in my mind, but then halfway through I felt like the story fell apart and she rushed the second half entirely.  Again, I marked some typos, made a few notes and comments, but for the most part, I wasn’t engaged in the story.

Then I received two pieces from the third person.  An 8-page short story that was whipped out in one morning, because she hadn’t expected to have to submit so early and it just played out that way.  Given that she wrote it in a couple of hours and sent it out with not much editing, it was really good.  Well written and executed.  And sad, depressing subject matter.  The rest of her pages were an excerpt from an early stages novel in progress.  There wasn’t much to glean from that in my opinion because it seemed to come from somewhere in the middle of the book and didn’t cover much.  There was nothing wrong with it, it just didn’t grab my attention.

But what really had me worried was when we got to class and the rest of the group started giving their critiques.  We sat in the circle and started with one person, going around the room, each of us taking a turn giving our feedback.  We have a four-minute limit and when that time is up we move on.  I listened as each person started commenting on the imagery and the symbolism and the subtext and so on and so forth and I thought, “well, shit, I didn’t see any of that.  I wasn’t even looking for that.”  I don’t think like that.  I don’t go looking for those things.  If they jump off the page at me, fine, but most of the time I see just what the words say and not much more.  So I didn’t need my full four minutes and I didn’t have much to say and I felt like I wasn’t pulling my weight.  And then I felt like a fraud because when it was my turn to talk, I found myself saying things like, “I really like this story” (I didn’t), “This was beautifully written” (sometimes true, sometimes not.  I mean we’re all competent writers or we wouldn’t be there, but some of the pieces weren’t exactly exceptional).  And then I was trying to give my feedback on the things that I saw that needed work and I was so afraid of saying something wrong that will come across as mean-spirited, when it’s really just an observation, an opportunity for improvement or clarification.

I drove home seriously worried about next week.  I am one of the three people who signed up to submit pages for the next session.  I’ll be submitting chapters 3 & 4 of The Teacher.  They happen to add up to exactly 25 pages, wich is convenient, but also, Chapter 1 has been posted on this blog and read by several people with lots of commentary.  It’s pretty polished.  Chapter 2 was given to two people and both had encouraging positive things to say.  So it only stands to reason that I would move on to Chapters 3 & 4.  But I found myself worried.  What if I’m the one person in the room who doesn’t write flowery, symbolic, laced with subtext, deep, meaningful stuff?  What if they all come back next week and tell me that my chapters are vapid and meaningless, with no substance and nothing to pull you in?  What if I just look like an idiot because I’m not an abstract thinker and that’s what this calls for?

Okay, let’s be honest here.  I know I’m a decent writer.  With the occasional lapse in proper comma use (or is it coma? – See, I’m screwed!) I’m pretty technically proficient.  Spell check is my best friend, unless I’m spelling the wrong word the right way (see coma/comma) in which case it’s of no use to me whatsoever.  But I’m also pretty straight forward and literal.  I’ve never been an abstract person.  Suddenly, I feel like a kid wearing his daddy’s clothes in the middle of a grown up party.

I know everyone will be nice.  And the truth is, people who look for those kinds of hidden, deeper meanings, will probably find them even if they’re not really there.  And all I have to do is sit quietly scribbling notes and nodding my head reverently.  Try not to roll my eyes and, please God!, don’t let me blush.  (That’s a pipe dream.)

I want the feedback and I know I’ll gain something from it.  I just don’t want to feel like too much of a fool.

I’m so in over my head.

The Nick of Time

~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

Let it be known that no matter what time this is posted, I am writing it “today”.  I have managed a perfect record of posting every day so far this year, and I would hate to mess that up, but today has been rather hectic and troublesome and there simply wasn’t time to write before now.

And even now…  I’m sitting in my car outside a very nice house in San Francisco, waiting for the commencement of my second week of the Writing Workshop I mentioned that I would be participating in.  I haven’t really had a chance to talk about it before now and I don’t have time now to do it justice, but it has been interesting (and I’ve barely gotten started.)

The time I would normally have spent writing this afternoon, was instead spent critiquing other people’s writing – something I find I’m a lot less comfortable with than I had imagined I would be.  It’s difficult to critique the work of complete strangers you will, nonetheless, be looking in the eye for weeks to come.

It was especially difficult because I didn’t particularly enjoy much of what I read, which is not to say it wasn’t good, just not my speed.  And so, I needed to critique the work without being too judgmental, or insulting, which wasn’t really so difficult, but more than that, I wanted to be constructively critical, but also encouraging.

I’ve discovered that, while I’ve come a long way, personally, I’m still an inherently negative person and it’s kind of difficult to find positive things to say when I don’t really feel them.  I managed to get them done though.  And since it’s the first week of handing back critiques, we’ll see how it goes and how I did in comparison to everyone else… If comparing is even in order.  It may not be.

I did learn one thing, however.  I should NEVER put this off to the last day, ever again!

Are You Being Served Downstairs?

~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

A quick point of correction for those of you keeping track at home, and really, aren’t you all?  Last week I told you the Write on Edge program was called “Remebe(red)” which evokes thoughts of the “Join (Red)” campaign and the many forms it has taken over the years.  While Join (Red) is certainly a worthy thing (isn’t anything whose purpose is to eliminate the AIDS epidemic?) that is not what Write on Edge’s program is about.

In actuality, the program is called, “RembeRed.”

This week on RemerRed, “…we asked you to write, in 400 words or less, a memoir in which dialect or colloquialisms feature prominently.”

“Why are you watching that?!?” I asked my mother on multiple occasions.  I would find her in her usual spot, laid out on the living room sofa with one cat curled behind her knees and another snug against her breast, and always with the remote control resting on her hip, ready to obey her tactile commands.

My mother always felt that American television was too unwholesome and often looked for alternatives.  Frequently she would find something she deemed acceptable on the local PBS affiliate which often aired British television shows.  She was fond of the likes of Upstairs Downstairs and Are You Being Served, All Creatures Great and Small and Masterpiece Theater.  It all felt so old and foreign to me, which of course it was, though it wasn’t nearly as old as I believed it to be at the time.  It didn’t help that most of the shows took place in a bygone era.  In truth PBS could be counted on to broadcast various British television series from just a few years prior.

I would sit in the living room, in front of the only television in the house, captive to my mother’s whims of fancy, pouting while my mother would laugh at things I couldn’t understand.  It was as though she was listening to a foreign language or a code only she could decipher.  All I knew was she had deemed these to be morally acceptable programs.

For many years as an adult, I avoided British television at all costs.  Little did I know there were a lot of wonderful television shows on British television, now more readily found on their American cable affiliate.  I have learned that at least one of these “morally acceptable” programs, Are You Being Served was actually quite risqué… and quite funny.

One of my favorite television shows, today, is Doctor Who.  Oh, it’s still like watching a program in a foreign language.  Sometimes I have to watch with the captioning activated, just to understand the words.  At least once per episode, some joke or reference escapes me entirely due to the cultural differences and the colloquialisms I simply do not understand, but these days I’m far more entertained, and even motivated to learn what these “foreign” words mean.

Fries are chips, chips are crisps, crackers are biscuits and biscuits are cakes (I think.)  Don’t even get me started on pants versus trousers!

 

 

It’s All Fun and Games

~ riggledo ~ 4 Comments

Another quiet day here at the Riggledome.  I haven’t even left the house today, which is nice.

You’ll recall that I had my appointment today to get my new DirecTV installed so I didn’t go to work today.  My appointment was between 8 and noon this morning.  I got up around 7:15 so I could make sure I was showered and dressed before the possibility of the installer’s arrival.  However, with so much on my plate this week-end, I didn’t get the cleaning done I wanted to before I went to bed last night, so I was counting on The Rule of Installation Windows coming into play.  What’s that you say?  You don’t know what The Rule of Installation Windows is?  Well, silly! The Rule of Installation Windows says that if your appointment will be between 8 and noon, the installer will show up at 11:50.  That would give me plenty of time to get my TV stand and dresser dusted, pull the TV stand out and sweep behind it, and clear a path to my dresser so the installer could get to the second TV with minimal risk to life and limb.

My installer showed up at 8:10.

At 8:40, I received a phone call from the installation company.  Since I don’t answer the phone when I don’t know who’s calling, I waited for the voice mail.  I was informed, at 8:40, that my appointment was today and that my installer would arrive between 8 and noon, and that he would call me 30 minutes before he arrived.  The installer was outside getting something from his truck when I listened to the voice mail, but I was sure to let him know I’d been reminded that my service would be installed sometime between 8 and noon.  We both had a good laugh and he said the dispatch guys at his company are good for that kind of reminder call.

When I had DirecTV installed at this house almost four and a half years ago, the installer that came out was on his first day out of training.  I was his first job without supervision.  It took him nearly five hours to install my service.  When the installer came today, he arrived at 8:10 and was gone by 10:00.  I have to say, it may be the rose-colored glasses, but I think the picture is clearer.  I know the DVR is more user-friendly.  I was a little dismayed to realize that I can’t record as many shows at once as I could with AT&T, but so far I haven’t found any conflicts that can’t be resolved with DirecTV’s ONE THOUSAND TIMES BETTER On Demand features.

Otherwise, it’s been a pretty quiet day.  I watched a little TV.  I watched a Doctor Who original series DVD from Netflix.  I read a bunch of blogs (and I still have 39 unread posts in my reader right now.  When I hit publish on this, I’m going to go make some dinner and then eat while I watch the pilot episode of Smash On Demand (one of those programming conflicts that prevents me from recording it when it’s on the air.)  And then I’ll do some of that dreaded ironing I always want to put off as long as I can.

Yep.  Nothing but fun and excitement around here!