Heather and Eels Experiment

If you didn't get a chance to get over to The Literary Lab yesterday, they're having an experiment on voice and I'm one of the participants. It is totally cool, and a LOT of fun guessing whose work is whose. Take a gander. You won't be disappointed.

At The Lab

If you are so inclined, The Literary Lab is performing an experiment today on voice and I am one of the participants. I thought I knew my friends' writing well. Shame on me. I am stumped. Take a look-see, it's a lot of fun.

Between a Rock

Well, Good Morning. It has certainly been a crazy few weeks. Why does Spring Break have to come in spring? It has totally messed with me. I have not written a word on any WiP since April 15. Let me tell you, when "they" say 'write every day', boy howdy they aren't kidding. I am out of the loop, out of whack, and out of patience.

The kitchen reno at my mother's house is coming together, however, I have been wrangled to paint as well. Not part of the deal when I signed on to help her. I spent all day Saturday on a ladder. And again on Sunday. I also found out, the contractor didn't put the drain hole in the floor for the new dishwasher, they didn't finish the wall where the bench goes, and there's a big electrical box sticking out of the wall, it's supposed to be flush. When Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy and let me tell you, Tony is going to get a few words first thing Monday morning.

I must apologize for my sporadic absence of late on the blogs, posting and commenting. Unfortunately it is spring and grass doesn't stop growing. Can I tell you how much I hate weed-wacking. It takes 3 days total to do my yard and my parents. I think if I ever did make any money from my writing, instead of a house cleaner, I think the first thing I'd do is get myself a lawn guy.

In other news, Gina Leigh Maxwell has a special post going on over at her blog today. She's been at school and just getting back into the blogosphere, so go on over and say hello.

And I'll be over with the gang at The Literary Lab this week. Mr. Bailey has come up with an experiment on voice -- if we as readers can tell our favorite authors just by some random writings. So stop by and check it out. I think it will be lots of fun. *sneaky laugh* See if you can guess which one is mine.

Question -- When you can't write (forced not voluntary hiatus) do you get cranky? Or do you just go with the flow?

Something-Something

After all yesterday's fun and excitement, today's post will be a little more serious. So be prepared.

I've been thinking about the Nine Muses Challenge that Sarah Jayne did last week over at Writing in the Wilderness. I don't write dark. I never have. I don't even write grey. I just don't see a need to. That being said, I also watched Persuasion on Masterpiece Classics on Sunday night. I'd never seen it, nor read the book (until now) however I took the quiz "Which Austen Heroine Are You" on someone's blog last week and I found out I'm Anne Elliot, so it was a special treat for me to see whom I was most like. And well, yes, I must admit after watching Persuasion (and also having finally read the book) I AM most like Anne Elliot. In more ways than six.

I've had this next blurb stewing around for awhile and after watching Persuasion, decided to let it out.

****DISCLAIMER -- to me this is very dark, almost black, about a funeral so feel free not to read it, it's kind of depressing. And also, I have a lot of swearing in it, so if you have delicate sensibilities, please don't read it either.

****

She slipped into the church quietly, smiling weakly as a member of the funeral home held the door for her, his black suit coat jacket still covered in rain drops on the shoulders. He handed her a program as she moved past him and walked silently down the far left aisle to the front of the pews. She heard the whispers of the congregation as she walked, and knew they were whispering about her.

Her bitch of a sister-in-law had heard the chatter and turned, so by the time she got to the family, her brother Charles has stood.

"Where the hell have you been? We waited at the house for forty-five minutes," he whispered hoarsely.

She genuflected and made the sign of the cross. Kate ignored his question, moved into the pew and whispered back, "Don't swear in church." She knelt down wearily on the worn leather kneeler. Kissing her rosary beads, she didn't even bother trying to pray but for the sake of the rest of her family, made believe. She gazed up at the statue of Saint Joseph holding the infant Jesus and wondered why the artist had painted their lips that awful shade of red.

Again she made the sign of the cross and leaned back into the pew. Her trench-coat was still soaking wet and made her skirt damp, her legs cold. Her feet were frozen in her shoes and she tried to stamp them as quietly as she could to warm them.

Her Uncle Randall leaned over the pew from behind her and whispered, "Are you okay?"

She turned and smiled, "Yes, Uncle, I'm fine."

The organist began the music and the congregation rose as one. Slowly all eyes turned to the back of the church. Father Brannigan blessed the casket, gave the small font of Holy Water to one of the alter boys, retrieved the incense from Father Alvarez then turned and preceded the casket to the alter.

Kate sat numbly, staring at Saint Joseph. She smelled the incense long before the casket came to rest in front of the alter and was grateful it overpowered the cloying smell of the flowers. She had no thoughts, she couldn't seem to form any. She instead watched the alter boy trying to tie his shoe and not fall off his chair. Father Brannigan droned on, sometimes in Latin, the way her mother liked mass, but most of the time in English. Kate didn't bother listening to Father reciting her mother's virtues. Kate had heard them all her life and knew she could never live up to any of them. She also tuned out Uncle Matthew as he gave the eulogy.

She moved through the mass with ingrained methodical habit, rising, kneeling, sitting, rising again. The organist began playing the opening notes to the Ave Maria and before Mrs. Kelly sang from the choir box upstairs, Kate knew that was the end of the mass for her. She would not make it through that song and did not want to feel the comfort from another when she began to weep. She wouldn't cry for her mother, she had already done that and there were no tears left to shed. No, she would be crying because the Ave Maria always made her cry.

She gathered up her small purse and umbrella and left the pew. She ducked out the little side door to the left of Saint Joseph that led downstairs to the church hall. Escaping through the exit door to the outside, she breathed a heavy sigh. She fumbled in her purse for a cigarette, lit it, and inhaled deeply.

Her brother Michael slammed out the door, "What the fuck is wrong with you? Leaving Ma in the middle of her mass."

Kate choked on her drag and looked at Michael with contempt, "Nice talk from a good Irish Catholic boy like you. I couldn't handle it, but of course you wouldn't understand that."

He was her eldest brother, the one who had kept the family together when Pop had died. The one who had laid down the rules, the one who had become the 'man of the family'. He was fifteen years her senior and the weight of his responsibility had left him with nothing but loathing for his youngest siblings. He had given up his own dreams for them and this made him bitter. Kate felt it now, as he looked at her.

"No, no Katie, I don't. Ma's up there in a fucking brown box and we're going to put her into the ground and all you can think about is having a damn cigarette."

"No Michael, that's not all I can think about. Do you have any idea how hard this is for me? Do you? Do you even see beyond your own fucking grief?"

Michael unclenched his hands, staring at his youngest sister. She had never used language like that before and it scared him. "All I know is that there's a church full of people up there expecting us to be united as a family when we put our mother in the ground. If you're not there, you know there'll be talk."

Kate took another drag and looked at her brother, disgust showing plainly in her eyes. "That's the whole point Michael, do you think I give a flying fuck what those people think? Where were they Michael, when Ma needed to go to the hospital? Where were they Michael, when Ma was puking her guts out in the toilet? Where were they Michael, when Ma peed herself every night? Did they come to help with the sheets and the laundry when she shit herself? Did they come to offer some sort of comfort? Stop by to say hello, how are you? Did they even bother to send a fucking casserole? No, they didn't. And neither did you. Or James, Peter, Charles, Rachel, Sarah, or Rebecca. No one did, except me. I took care of Ma. You all had your own lives, and kids, and work, and fucking little league. Not one of you fucking bothered to see if I needed a day off, or an hour, or just enough time to take a fucking shower and shave my legs so Ma would have someone with her. Do you have any idea what I've been through?"

She pressed her eyes shut and leaned against the freezing wall of the church.

"I'm sorry Katie, I know this has been hard on you." Michael tried to assuage his guilt.

She opened her eyes and looked at her eldest brother. His hair was nearly white, and the beer belly pushed itself over his too-tight slacks. When had he become so old? He was only forty-five.

"No Michael, you don't know. You have no fucking idea how hard this has been on me. And neither do the rest." Kate threw the cigarette on the ground and stepped on it with her black ballet flat.

"Look, they're starting the procession to the grave sight. C'mon, I'll walk with you." He said softly and touched her elbow.

"I'm not going. I said good-bye to Ma a long time ago. I don't need or want to watch her get lowered into the ground." She took a step toward the parking lot, then turned back to Michael. "She was always afraid of the dark Michael. I thought, you of all people would have remembered that."


****

Are You Smaht? Paht II

Just a quick side bar before we start today's Smaht Session.

I received another form rejection for my query yesterday afternoon, so that makes two. I also received a form rejection from another agency from last September 16 when I queried this same book. It's a good thing I wasn't holding my breath waiting to hear from them. Four months on a query? Hhmmmm...I think they need to hire a secretary or something. Although she also said if I had something else for her to look at, she'd be delighted, but not until after May. Yeah, no, somehow I don't think so. Good thing I didn't send her this query.

Okay, as you all read, I have a bachelor's degree. My major was Native American Ethnology, my minor was creative writing. I went to a hippie college in Vermont where you wrote, and read, and read and wrote, and then wrote some more. Some colleges make you write thesis' at the end of the term, well, we wrote thesis papers for everything. Which is where I learned to write. When we graduated we had to give a lecture based on the culmination of all the work we had done at the college and present it to the students and faculty. (Kind of a nerve wracking event actually and really a very big deal.)
There was a professor, whom I never studied under, (and I respected enormously) come up to me after my lecture and say that my presentation was just as good as any dissertation written by a grad student. I was overjoyed and blown away, and just basically in awe because I never thought I was that smaht.

Which is why I am so (still) blown away that my query actually got a request for a partial. When you are told by your friends who read you work,"oh this is fantastic" do you believe them? Or do you think they're just telling you that because you want to hear it? If someone REALLY SMAHT told you how good or bad your writing was, would that make a difference in what, how or if, you continued to write?

I for one don't know the difference between a dangling particple and a modifying clause but does that make me a bad writer? I think the only two rules I ever remembered were " i before e except after c " and "not 'that' -- 'who' -- when speaking of people" Just because I have a bachelor's degree, does that make me smarter than the person who doesn't? I don't think so. Just because I don't know the difference between the above mentioned, does that make me a bad writer. I don't think so.

As I said yesterday, I have read some really interesting work over the blogosphere these last few days and have been blown away by the quality of the writing. Does that mean I think they're smarter than I am? I don't know. I know how to do a lot of other things in this world besides write, and some of them really well, does that make me smarter than they are? I don't know.

And so gentle readers, the questions for the day are -- do you think you're smarter than the average person? And do you really need to know all the rules of grammer to write a fantastic book?

Are You Smaht?

After yesterday's heady upheaval, I think it's time to get back to the real world.

Now some of you may know, I am originally from Rhode Island, which means I talk funny. Some days I sound like Ted Kennedy, others I sound like Fran Drescher, without the annoying laugh. I now live in North Carolina. They talk funny down here. I joke with my one friend, (because she's originally from California and didn't move here until she was 15), that I can't understand what some people are saying, "I can't understand Southern." I also can't understand, French, Italian, or Urdu either. And because I am who I am, I'll talk to a rock. I love to talk, get me on the phone just to say hi, I'll keep you on it for 3 hours. But how frustrating is it, to be in your own country and not be able to carry on a conversation, or get directions, or find out what day the trash goes out.

When I lived in Nevada I ran into sort of the same thing. My friends (I had more than one there) would make me say, "We pahk the cah in the yahd at the mahket." over and over again. They laughed, they thought it was funny. I also used to say Ne-vah-da. It's not pronounced that way, it's pronounced, Ne-va-da. Same with Oregon. I used to say Or-eh-gahn. Boy howdy did they let me have it on that. It's pronounced Or-i-gginn.

Funny how the way I speak seems to garner different results from people I've met. The people in Nevada made good-natured fun of me, but didn't think of me in any way other than I was a nice person, and a good friend, you know the usual stuff people think of you. I had a lot of friends in Nevada. (Some I still have 12 years later.) The people in North Carolina think I'm a snob and too smart for them, which lends to the fact I only have one friend here. Honest. The other mommies in school won't talk to me because they say I'm too smaht. I scare them. HUH?

Now, please let me reassure you, I am averagely intelligent. There are people I've met in real life, and people I've met here through the blog who are infinitely so much more brilliant than I. Words fall from their mouths (or on screens) that I have to look up and say, "Wow man, where did you learn that word?" Sometimes I wonder if they were raised on Greek and Latin tomes, Mommy read the Illiad to them at night instead of Goodnight Moon. I am in awe of these people. Because I thought I was smaht.

I have a bachelor's degree. I read the classics. I read trash, I read current fiction, I read newspapers, I read the New Yorker. I read a lot. Does that make me smaht? I don't know. I'd read a few blogs yesterday and decided I was not so smaht,
especially for people not to talk to me.

Let me ask you this -- do people not talk to you because they think you're smarter than they are? Do you not talk to people because you think they're smarter than you?

Outline

Mr. Bailey says I need to get some work done. I know I do as well. I just want to say that even if I'm not writing, per se, at the keyboard, I do have pen and paper on hand to jot down notes, scenes, dialogue. I even keep paper and pen in the bathroom, which the munchkin thinks is funny but you never know where inspriation will strike.

I worked on the outline for the YA I'm still trying to write. I actually finished it too. The outline. I wonder if I could use it as a synopsis. Anyway, I usually never do that. I'm generally a panster and find sticking to a 'formal' script blows my creativity apart. But this book needs some kind of structure. The word count is different, the plot is small, the characters are one-dimensional, okay maybe two dimensional. The chapters have now been plotted out and it seems easy enough to just sit down and write it. Maybe not.

I've also been working on Book 2 of the romance genre. I have no outline for that. I'll write the synopsis at the end of the book.

I'm also developing another little something something that may or may not make it to the front burner. I'm searching for my voice, and damned if I know where it is. Is that why I can't settle in to write just one thing, is that why I have so much angst with a little thing like a YA. Is that why I'm falling apart every time I turn around?

All in the search for a 'voice'.