Poser!

Venecian Masks (Photo credit: ChaTo (Carlos Castillo))

This morning I made Flower Child scrambled eggs for breakfast.  She thought it was her lucky day.  Nope, I didn’t get to the grocery store yesterday morning, and that’s all I’ve got.  The last two slices of bread are for her lunch.  I would have made a smoothie, but there’s brown crap running from the faucet this morning, and the blender is still sitting in the sink waiting to be washed from Nerd Child’s smoothie yesterday morning.  This also means I didn’t want to make another bowl dirty by beating the eggs first.  What the hell, mixing them in the pan with the spatula is the same thing, right?

Fake it ’til you make it.  Kinda sorta.

My motto is probably more along the lines of  fake it ’til it’s bedtime.  Out of standard, practical for a school day breakfast fare?  Scrambled eggs.  Haven’t done laundry?  Wear dress clothes.  ”Oh, Mrs Fringe, look at you!  Doing something fun/special/important today?”  Why yes, yes I am.  Pretending I haven’t worn every last t-shirt I own.  Except for that Dallas Cowboys one circa 1981 with very inappropriate holes worn through it, that for some reason I never toss when getting rid of old clothes.

Feel like crap?  Makeup.  Double crap, can’t remember where I last put my makeup bag.

Gained some weight over the winter and too lazy to work out?  God bless the designer who decided empire waists should come back into style (five years ago is too still in), along with seamstresses of flowing skirts and A-lines.

Housewife (Photo credit: garryknight)

Doubting that you’ve pulled off or can pull off a fun, light beach read type novel, cause let’s face it, you aren’t all that fun and lighthearted?  Keep going, start the next one, only have this one be dark, not fun, and not likely to be spotted on the boardwalk.  Wait, this doesn’t quite fit with the equation, does it?  Hmm, well, at least I’ll have a writah-ly-type excuse when this one doesn’t sell.  Angst isn’t for everyone, after all.

Given that I’m so fucking excellent at faking it, I can’t imagine why I haven’t yet made it.

Suckage and Despair, Chapter 438

English: Danebridge Church Choir singing al fresco (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sing along, now.

There are glorious highs and lows to writing.  The highs come from when you know you’re clicking, a sentence is exactly what you want it to be, you’re in a great rhythm, being productive, you look at a completed piece and think, “yes,” this is worthy of submission.  The lows, of course, are when you’re struggling, unsure of clarity, convinced that the work you’ve dedicated hours, weeks, months, years to is absolute crap.  Lows also come in the form of letters/emails where the salutation states, “Dear Author,” and continues on to blah blah blah too much boring suckage, move along.

There are a few areas of writing where I’m fairly confident, and ride those highs.  Logically, it makes no sense, I shouldn’t have any highs or confidence without validation.  But they’re necessary in order to pursue this insane, frustrating road.  Some days I wish doing laundry could give me that high.  Today is one of those days.

I have an idea, and I want to roll with it.

Pencils (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve begun the new WIP.  Here’s my high/low paradox.  One of the areas I’m normally confident in is openings.  I’m pretty good at hitting that “right” first sentence or three, just enough for a reader to want to know where the fuck I’m going with this.  I’ve got, for now, the right opening scene, but my opening sentences aren’t strong enough.  Even for manuscripts that rely heavily on atmosphere and characterization, you’ve got to hit the ground running.  Maybe especially so.  Being a lunatic, this naturally leads me to wonder if it’s time to give away my favorite pencils and have a party with the delete button in my documents section.

It doesn’t matter if I’m going to change the beginning later, delete it, shift it, whatever, I’ve got to hit the right note starting out.  For me.  It’s my crazy process.

It’s Sunday, and I don’t generally write on Sundays.  They’re my day for general wallowing.  I didn’t write yesterday because of computer issues, so I want to be productive today.  Big Senile Dog and Little Incredibly Dumb Dog are looking at me, wondering why it’s 11am and I haven’t fed them yet.  If I go into the kitchen to feed them, I’ll be faced with the sink overflowing with pans and dishes from last night’s dinner.  So I’ll have to wash them.  Once they’re washed, I’ll see how messy the counters are in general.  So then I’ll have to clean the counters.  Clean counters will remind me of the layer of dust in the living room.  I’ll dust, and then realize I should wash/polish the doo dads lining the windowsills.  Then I’ll remember the laundry pile, be too tired to sort and bring the laundry downstairs to get involved in laundry wars when I still have to make dinner, and remember I was supposed to be writing.  Then I’ll remember why I didn’t write, because what should be a high for me is currently a low.  Proof of suckage.

Is it bedtime?

Under the covers (Photo credit: Being a Dilettante)

And Happy Father’s Day to all!

Alert the Authorities

Professor Kobb (Photo credit: gothicburg)

Something I’ve noticed in a lot of areas of life these days–highlighted in the blogosphere, everyone’s an authority.  Why?  How is this?  I’m an average gal and as such, I’m an authority on…

Nothing.  That’s right, nothing.  Tons of blogs and bloggers out in cyberspace, the number larger than degreed professionals, and yet, so many are “experts.”

I write, and sometimes I blog about writing.  These posts are about my process, my experiences.  Certain aspects of my process and my experiences have a common thread with some other wanna be writers.  This doesn’t make me an expert.  And if it did, what would my expertise be in?  Wanna beism?  If I am ever published, it will still be my experiences, not writer’s rules to live by.

Sandro Botticelli – Madonna del Magnificat (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Even within the blogs of professionals on writing, the advice and rules vary widely from blog to blog, professional to professional.  Subjective. Don’t get me wrong, I love books on writing, I own dozens, and have read dozens more, by published authors, well published authors, agents, and editors.  Some are useful, some are motivating, and many more I’ve kept looking back to the “about the author” page to figure out how and why this book was published.  But it was, I bought it, others bought it.  So there you have it, proof of my lack of authority on writing.

Sometimes I blog about parenting.  Again, my experiences. How in the world would I tell anyone else what would work in their home, for their children?  I have three kids, each quite different from the next.  If I have to tweak my approach for each of my own three, I think we’re well out of the realm of tweaking if I’m talking about someone else’s kids.  Subjective.

Sometimes I blog about being a woman.  Again, there are certain common experiences in being a woman that most of us experience.  I can only speak to being an undereducated woman in New York.  But there are more and different experiences for a woman who doesn’t have children, doesn’t get married, lives in the suburbs, lives on a farm in Kansas, has a PHD in electrical engineering, lives in Kuwait.  Tons of “women’s” experts out there.  Such high authorities, in fact, they’re going to tell all of us what to do with our bodies, how to have a relationship, and how much money we should earn.  *This is definitely fodder for a whole other post.  Maybe an article.  Maybe a book.  Oh wait, I don’t have a platform apart from being a woman and living as one.  See?  No authority here.

Uterus Embroidery Hoop Art (Photo credit: Hey Paul Studios)

I blog about living in New York.  I was born and raised here.  I can guarantee the woman living up the street in her brownstone doesn’t think I’m an expert on life in New York.  Trust me, her New York is different than mine.  I know, it’s hard to trust someone who isn’t an authority, but try.

Sometimes I blog about reefing.  If you saw the sad state of my tank at the moment (running dark for a few days to kill a green hair algae outbreak) you’d snicker.

How about another favorite of mine, being broke?  Let’s be honest, I’m pretty excellent at it.  I have had the requisite hundred thousand hours of practice.  Or have I?  The guy who lives on the church steps might not think so.  I’m guessing if he read Mrs Fringe he’d call me out for being a fraud.

I think this leaves dog poop.  Mrs Fringe is an authority on dog poop.

Then again, maybe not.

It’s subjective.

Dale Chihuli giant blue poop Walmart bag sculpture (Photo credit: reynolds.james.e)

Hey You!

It’s I! Or is it she?

The Three Faces of Eve (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As mentioned last week, I’m now obsessing over planning my next manuscript.  Today’s obsession, what point of view (POV), tense, etc.  These choices will have great impact on the overall tone and voice of the narrator and by extension, the novel.

First person (I) is and has been very popular for quite a few years now.  Generally speaking, I prefer third (she).  I like the distance that third person offers, with the flexibility to draw in close. First person, in my opinion, too often feels breathless.  It’s the acquaintance you run into on your way home who you smile when you recognize them, “Oh, how nice, I can’t remember why I lost touch with Mr Z.”

talk so fast (Photo credit: Leonard John Matthews)

Five minutes into it, “I’m glad to hear how he is, what’s going on in his life.”   Ten minutes into it, “This has been lovely, but I really have to pee.”  Twenty brain-numbing, eyes-twitching minutes later, “This is why I stopped returning his calls.  For the love of God, make it stop!”

Second person is brilliant when it’s done well, but very few know how to do it well, and I have my doubts about my own ability. The whole goal in fiction is the suspension of disbelief.  Pulling that off while directly addressing the reader?  Might well be beyond my pay grade.

Wondering why I’m having this angst if these are my thoughts on POV?  Me too.  Except I have a certain way of writing, getting started.  There’s always a very clear opening scene in my head, and I write it.  This scene may or may not remain the opening, may or may not end up deleted, but it’s what gets my fingers clicking on the keyboard.  Or pencil to paper, if it’s been too long since I’ve last written. The problem is the opening scene I’m “seeing” for this story is in first person.  Fine if this was a short story, but I don’t know that I want to write an entire novel with that “I” voice.

And just because I know you’re all dying to know about the rest of this Fringey writing process, I usually have a song that is going through my head as I’m planning a new story.  Here’s this one:

Hear that bass track?  That’s the framework I’m seeing, the pacing.  A little dark, a little ominous, but it keeps moving forward with that rhythm.

1001 Questions of Mamaing

Happy Saturday, Fringelings!

It’s been an exhausting week for me, lots of ups and downs, how about you?  Two highlights.  One, Nerd Child is home for the summer, hooray!  It was a seventeen hour day yesterday, much of it spent driving in torrential rains that seemed to call for an ark, but he’s home.

What’s the other highlight?  SnapinTime, from The Voice from the Backseat very generously donated her limited time to watermarking some of my photos of Flower Child’s artwork, so I could share it here.  Thank you, Snapin!

I love looking at art, and so does Flower Child.  We’ve spent quite a bit of time in museums together.  My sweetie has a real talent.  It’s newly discovered, or perhaps it would be better stated to say newly unlocked.  I can’t say why, for sure, but it emerged after receiving an iPad to use for schoolwork.  Is it the preservation of energy (a precious and finite resource)?  Excessive fatigue is one of the most, if not the most, debilitating features of her struggles.  I don’t know, but as a mama who watches her struggle with so much–yet she always holds on to the positive–and as a person who is hard pressed to draw a stick figure, this work makes me weep, literally.

angel

truncated tree, with color

dog and bird on a branch

tree

woman sleeping

branch and moon

Nerd Child

woman with dreds

Flower Child is indeed, special.  Her thoughts take twists and turns that can be difficult to follow, and clarity is connected to how she’s feeling physically.  The drawing of the dog and bird looks like it was done by a different person, no?  This was a work she produced last weekend, when she was unwell and “crashing,” as we call it, for lack of a better word.  Not completely crashed, because then she’s hard pressed to hold a pencil.  After several hours of rest, sleep, and her evening meds, she produced “woman with dreds.”

I’m hoping to figure out a way to get her art lessons this summer.  We need someone who will be flexible and ok with these inconsistencies, and sympathetic to the &*$#% budget.

Lost in Space

Lost in the space (Photo credit: JimmyMac210)

Feeling kinda

 

Betwixt and between.

 

I’m trying to decide what to work on next, while I begin the process of querying.  I have to be working on something, because querying without another project to focus on is a certain design plan that leads to a very fitted white jacket.  Nicely accessorized with padded walls, but really, I’d prefer something loose and flowing right now.  I could go back to the WIP that’s been frying brain cells for years already.  I could begin something completely new.  I’ve got an idea for a character, but no plot.  This is new for me.  Usually by the time I’m at or near the end of a project, and I’ve been writing regularly, the first portion of the next project seems to write itself, because it’s been brewing.  Not this time.  I’m not blocked, just unsure of which direction I want to take.

 

betwixt (Photo credit: Daniel*1977)

In the meantime, I’ve been trying to do some reading.  In doing so, I’ve discovered a fundamental truth about Mrs Fringe has changed.  I don’t remember not knowing how to read, I don’t remember not loving to read, and I’ve always been a trope of a bookworm.  Sure I had books I liked, books I loved, books I raced to finish because I didn’t enjoy them, but I read them.  I would read anything, and finish it.  If I had nothing new to read, I would reread; hell, I remember my mother yelling at me because I was standing in the refrigerator, reading the labels on the condiments.

 

I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been broke for long enough that I’ve adjusted to not having things to read, or because of my period earlier this year of not being able to lose myself in a novel, but it has changed.  I’ve picked up at least three books in the past few months that I didn’t enjoy, and I didn’t finish them.  How does this happen?  Something so much a part of me, how others see me and how I define myself, no longer true.

 

I’ve also read several books I liked, and a couple that I loved.  But now that I’m feeling this whole whichwaydoIgo in terms of writing, I wonder if the two are connected.  I wonder if Heinz is still running that write-our-slogan campaign.

 

A gruesome accident (Photo credit: KateMonkey)

 

 

 

 

Braggage: Warning, Sap Ahead

No Whining (Photo credit: bepositivelyfit)

I do quite a bit of whining here, if you hadn’t noticed.  I happily tell you I’ve got plenty to whine about.  It’s a life, like anyone else’s, and I’ve got a few bright spots too.  The beauty of a novel that makes me cry because I’ll never write anything as masterful, getting to know a new friend, writing a story, a scene, a sentence I’m proud of, the mango I cut open this morning that was absolutely perfect.

But most braggage centers around my children.  I’m broke, overcrowded, overtired and frustrated, but in so many ways I hit the lottery when it comes to my kids.  They’re good people, all three of them.

Man Child isn’t coming home for the summer. I miss him like crazy, but he has a wonderful job opportunity–one that came from his hard work. the good impression he makes on others, and the fact that he has proven himself to be trustworthy and a hard worker.

Nerd Child comes home next week.  I’m a lot more excited about this than he is.  The fancy shmancy school he attends has turned out to be a perfect fit for him.  Yesterday he called and told me he won an award for character and leadership.

Earth (Photo credit: tonynetone)

Flower Child couldn’t be sweeter than she is.  She cares about the world and all of the people in it, honestly confused as to why people ever do harmful things to each other and the earth.

I woke up thinking about this stuff, feeling okay.  Summer has arrived here in NY, ooh, bliss of a comfy old summer dress and flip flops.  I even decided to spend a few hours pretending if I spent long enough Googling, I’d figure out how we’d be able to move to a beach town where we could afford a house, find employment, and have good health care for Flower Child.

Lily Tomlin (Photo credit: Larry He’s So Fine)

Instead of knock knock, my reality announces itself with a ring.  First, my pharmacist called.  Yes indeed, we have a close enough relationship that he called to say hey Mrs F, it’s Pharmacist, I’ve got a Led Zeppelin CD here for you that you and Husband are going to love.  Ring ring, hi Mrs Fringe, it’s pediatrician’s office, the second round of paperwork for Nerd Child’s summer program is here for you to pick up.  Yah, great, thank you so much, I’ll be there.  First I’m going to try to finish the edits I’ve been trying to get through. Ring ring, Mrs Fringe?  This is super special futuristic lab doing the next round of genetic testing the puzzle doctor ordered, we need your credit card information before we start running any of the tests.  Fringelings, I can’t tell you how I love hearing other writers smugly announce that if writing is truly important to you, you can and do make time every day.  Ring ring, Mrs Fringe, this is Puzzle Doctor’s office to confirm Flower Child’s appointment for next week.  That appointment was canceled.  No, you’re still on the schedule.  It was supposed to be canceled.  Well, we’ll have to speak with Puzzle Dr assistant and find out, I’ll call you back, ok, Mrs F?  Sure.

Flower Child wasn’t feeling well this afternoon/evening.   Not feeling well in a way that makes me nervous, but not a crisis.  I was supposed to meet Fatigue, Husband was home, I was only going across the street for an hour…so I did. The day started out so promising, damn it–I wanted that feeling back!  If you were wondering, the nectar of the gods is a cold glass of gin and lemonade.  Until the stranger sitting next to you begins eating your french fries.  Then it’s just time to give up.  It’s a life, and tomorrow is another day.

Riveting, A Literary V-8

Edward_Lear_A_Book_of_Nonsense 115.jpg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As mentioned often, I haven’t had a day off in years.  Some days contain more suckage than others.  Today, not starting off so well.  I got up and decided to make blueberry muffins for breakfast.  Flower Child choked on a piece of kale during dinner last night, freaked out, not much was eaten, therefore I wanted to be sure she would really eat this morning.  No one else was up yet, I was able to make the batter and get them in the oven.  Another often touched on point here in Fringeland, I have a teeny, tiny kitchen.  Rules out cooking or baking anything that involves needing a lot of space, and involves regular accidents, because I’ve got about 8 inches of counter space to work with.  Got the muffins in the oven without incident, washed what I used for prep, ignored the pot and dishes still in the sink from last night.  Time to get those muffins out of the oven.  First tray, balanced on top of the stove.  Second tray, on the lilliputian amount of space on the dining room table that isn’t used as Husband’s office (read, overflowing with papers, pens, and crap).  I now want to slide the rack back inside the oven, which of course, resulted in the first (full) tray flipping off of the stove and half of the muffins flying out and decorating the kitchen.  Sigh.

Historical Oven cooking depicted in a painting by Jean-François Millet (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Flower Child is now up, curled on one end of the couch under a blanket, and waiting anxiously for the muffins not covered in dog hair and drool to cool off.  I sit on the couch with my laptop and my coffee.  After a little bit, I tell her she can take a muffin.  She throws her blanket off, and my coffee spills onto the couch, the floor, my phone, and my book.  Fuuuuuck!  For the record, she’s been standing in front of the muffins for twenty minutes now, waiting for me to tell her which muffin to take, afraid to move at all despite the fact that I told her six times to just pick one.  I don’t want to look at them anymore.  Husband woke up, looked in the kitchen, and asked if I made scrambled muffins for breakfast.

So, what to do when you need to escape life and you can’t actually have a day off? Read, and try to pretend your couch doesn’t reek of cafe con leche.  I was thinking about books and reading this morning, anyway.

What makes a novel great?  And I mean fantastic, enduring, cross genre and cross generational.  The type of book that you either can’t put down, or have to put down every so often so the perfect line of prose you just read and reread can be examined, dissected and allowed to swim through the synapses of your brain until it’s coming out of your pores like the morning after a night of drinking cheap vodka.

I think it’s when the story is so clear but so flexible you not only want to be the main character, or in that world, you can apply it to yourself in your world, your life.  Open for interpretation, if you will, allowing for projection.  Kind of weird, because many of my favorite novels involve stories and lives I wouldn’t really want, they’re tragic.  But I can feel them.  And you, opening the book with a different viewpoint, different life experiences, different locale, different socio-economic background, can see yourself in that main character, in that story, and feel them too.

I don’t want to say ambiguous, because that has negative connotations, and too often makes readers think of torturous works of literature assigned by pompous and musty professors.  You know the ones, they smell like my couch.  Personally, I’m ok with ambiguous, especially ambiguous endings, but many aren’t.  They want to know there is a happy ever after for Joe Smith, or maybe they want to see Mrs Fringe get her comeuppance.  Maybe the story, the character, needs to be pliable.  Something that has it’s own form, shape, and limits, but can be stretched through a reader’s brain to mold to individual interpretations.

I’m going to make more coffee and give Flower Child a muffin.  Tell me what you think.

English: Constellation of Literature pavilion in the Temple of Literature, Hanoi. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ahh, Nothing Like Blustery Autumn Day

In May.

A pair of well-used flip-flops. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is what I should be wearing.   Instead, I’m wearing a turtleneck and winter coat.  For the love of God, I’ve got socks on!  Socks!

I hate socks.  Don’t put them on until the last possible day in the fall, and put them all away the moment my toes don’t actually get stiff in the spring.  Yes, I’m whining.  And yes, I know it isn’t just NY, it seems like much of the country is experiencing unusually cold temperatures right now.

Last year Flower Child and I spent one of the days of Memorial Day weekend on the beach.  I’m sure, over the course of the weekend, I cooked things that were seasonal.  Tofu dogs, cole slaw, burgers, whatever.

At least it’s still a three day weekend.  And today Husband was going to work later, which meant I could sleep in.  (I try to walk the dogs at least once while he’s home so Flower Child doesn’t have to get dressed and come out with me in the mornings of her days off.) Except I didn’t get to sleep in.  Something went wrong with the plumbing yesterday; dirty, disgusting water backed up into our tub.  So instead of snoring, I was downstairs harassing the handyman at eight AM, to make sure he didn’t “forget” to come up and fix it.  Again.  In my coat, because it was 44 degrees this morning.

I’m making soup for dinner today. Kale and cannellini bean soup.  So wrong for the calendar, I didn’t have soup stuff in the cabinet, and had to go food shopping first thing this morning.

1) Saute your base in olive oil.  I used garlic, red onion, carrots, celery, fresh ground salt and pepper, thyme and oregano.

2)Add canned peeled tomatoes, smush them in pot, cook about 20 minutes.

3)Add water and or broth (I used about half and half), kale, beans, and a hunk of Parmesan rind. Bring to boil, then lower down and cook about half an hour. *I prefer escarole, but the store didn’t have it today and I didn’t want to go to another store.

4) Immersion blender into pot, blend part (but not all, and don’t blend the Parm rind) of soup, I did a rough, quick few runs with it, leaving it mostly chunky, just adding texture.

5) Add torn stale Italian bread.  Or baguette, whatever you’ve got, cook at least another 40 minutes over low heat.

Saute

Add your stuff and cook down.

Final cooking, after blending part

On the Rocks, Extra Grit

Zwei Cocktails “Leap Frog” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Now that it’s late Spring, we’re having some nice weather days here in NY.  Not today, and not forecast for this holiday weekend, but it is that time of year.  Women toss their tights, sunbathers glare at me as I walk dogs through the park, and restaurants put some tables and chairs outside to extend their seating and offer sidewalk cafes.

Stop and think about that.  Al fresco dining in the middle of Manhattan.  Now it’s true, we don’t have too much in the way of drive-thrus here.  If I’m starving and in a hurry, you just might be able to spot me eating a slice (pizza) as I walk south on Columbus Ave. Not high on the list of dining experiences but it can work.

But I would like someone to explain to me how they think it’s a good idea to pay for a restaurant meal and drinks, and sit outside on Broadway.  New York is a whole lot cleaner than it used to be, but it isn’t clean.  The amount of dirt in the air is measurable (I know this because the windows in my apartment are usually open, even ten floors above the street a lot of dirt drifts in daily).  Ask any person in the city wearing open sandals or flip flops what the soles of their feet look like at the end of the day.

Stephansplatz in Vienna, Austria. Pedestrians walking by. In center a young woman sits on sidewalk barefoot, with the dirty soles of her feet towards the camera. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Don’t forget the tons of pedestrians checking out what’s in your dish as they sneeze past.

I’m not saying I never/have never had a meal outside in the city.  I’ve done my share of picnics in the park with the kids.  And there’s a lovely cafe in Riverside Park we used to go to.  Out of budget now, but it is a nice afternoon option.  Grills and tables under a cement dome that provides shade and cooler air, it feels like a public barbeque.  Fancier tables are right alongside the Hudson River.

Back to those sidewalk restaurant extensions.  There are trees planted along most avenues, growing from square cutouts in the sidewalk.  Pretty, and if they’re big/old enough, they offer a little shade and fresh breeze.  You’re really appreciate that nice oak three feet away from your table when the dogwalker goes past with a pack-walk.  The standard poodle especially loves that tree.  As does the mastiff and St Bernard.  Splatter splish.

If it’s a popular time of day/evening, don’t forget the press of people waiting for a table.  Don’t rush, they’re fine waiting.  New Yorkers are much friendlier than tourists expect, they’re happy to provide entertainment. The foodies–or the picky eaters–will deconstruct the contents of your plate and debate the merits of sitting at an outside table.  Many are comedians, and crack jokes about how hungry they are, offering to share your meal.

Bon apetit!

English: Looking east across Broadway, past Tom’s Restaurant, down West 112th Street on a cloudy afternoon. ZIP 10025. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)