Fleshing out my story ideas

I just got back from a late lunch-break at Starbucks. I was feeling cranky and thought some coffee would help. What helped was sitting still for a moment and realizing my problem: I've been so caught up in getting my condo cleaned before vacation (this psychotic expectation I put on myself that everything must be neat and clean or I don't feel good leaving for more than a few days-- no easy feat considering how messy we are the rest of the year) and finishing my interdisciplinary submission for next time, that I haven't thought about or done much writing. (Phew, long sentence!)

So, now I'm going to brainstorm/flesh out the story ideas I first mentioned here.

The Rest of June
(The story has been told from the first person POV of Susan. Now I'm exploring getting into the dad's head, as I did here. The main plot is Susan's mom died, and Susan learned she was having an affair.)

Story ideas/scenes

• Start story with scene I described in my Sunday Scribblings post: the father is at home, drunk, and his secretary comes to see if he's OK. They sleep together--the first woman other than his wife he's slept with in 17 years.
• Another scene where he's back at work and seduces/is seduced by former student. Maybe secretary sees/knows and gets upset.
• In between, there are scenes showing his loneliness--eating alone, etc. Maybe he goes to the diner where June and Harold met. He could run into Harold. I think that as much as he'd want to confront him, he wouldn't.
• Must be a scene or two where he interacts with Susan. Over the phone? Does she come back to visit for a while? Maybe both--she calls, thinks he sounds weird, goes home. He gets mad at her for nosing into his life. Maybe she catches him with one of his new lovers. He is probably really dense when it comes to what's going on with his daughter's life--show that.
• Maybe Susan's sister, Liz comes into this somehow. Maybe dad overhears Susan on the phone with her, and Liz then comes to see what's going on.

I'm realizing what I really need to do is some more character development of the father so I know who he is. For another post soon...

Longer project (story involving dogs)
The first scene will be of the dog landing on the main character’s front yard. She will have been hanging curtains—she just moved in. The scene will involve the back and forth of the dog being scared and territorial, and clearly needing help. Will end with it drinking the water she left out for him.

Next scene will show her taking the dog to the animal shelter. She’ll be talking to it in the car, explaining why she can’t keep it. But she will have trouble giving it up.

Back at the house, she will miss it and be sad cleaning out its bowl.

She’ll go back to see it, bringing it toys and treats. The woman at the shelter will befriend her, convince her to start volunteering there.

Again, I need to learn a whole lot more about the character before I can get much further…

What ever happened to Labor Day?

I just got a press release with this opening line: "Halloween is approaching, and many parents may wonder if trick-or-treating is safe." I'm guessing that Christmas ornaments at CVS aren't far behind...

Book questions and answers

Thanks to poet mom and chief biscuit for these questions (and you can thank me for the answers!)

1. One book that changed your life? Bird by Bird by Ann Lamott
2.One book you've read more than once? Little Children by Tom Perotta
3.One book you'd want on a desert island?Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde
4.One book that made you laugh? The Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evonavich
5.One book that made you cry? The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
6.One book that you wish you had written? The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
7.One book you wish had never been written? Hmm... Maybe the Daniel Steele books that I wasted too many hours on as a teen. Though I take that back because while she's not exactly literature, I'm sure there are many people who get into reading through her books, so it's probably a good thing that they're out there.
8.One book you are currently reading? The Last Days of Dogtown by Anita Diamant (Very good so far)
9.One book you have been meaning to read? So many! I have a huge pile at home. What tops the list is probably A Bullfighter Checks her Makeup by Susan Orleans because I have had it for over a year now!

Me and my Chloe dog

I want to get a picture into my bio, and it seems like the easiest way to do so is to post the pic in my blog first. So here's a random post of me and Chloe on the first day we got her, before she chewed through that expensive retractable leash I'm holding.

Sun, fun, and wine

Me thinks I've caught a bit of August fever. I had a wonderful relaxing weekend filled with Shakespeare in the Park, a festival in the North End (our Little Italy) and time spent reading and drinking out doors. It was wonderful, and I *almost* didn't let thoughts of my messy condo and my undone MFA work intrude. Well, at the very least, I buried those thoughts under wine and sun. But now reality sets in and I realize how much work I have ahead of me! So, nose to the grindstone today... just as soon as I finish goofing off. :)

PS--Thanks to Alyndabear for introducing me to another writing prompt web site. I'll probably tackle one of these later this week!

Sunday Scribblings: Who Else Can I Still Be?

I love these Sunday Scribblings prompts! I think I'll do this one twice, once as a personal response and once as fiction.

Personal:
I feel like my life goals are the same or similar to what they've always been:

1. be calmer,
   
2. write more,
   
3. have fun.

I wonder: is it a good thing that I'm consistent throughout the years, or does it mean I'm not accomplishing anything? Let's go with the former since my latest goal is to become someone who is gentler on herself. :)

Fiction:
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm playing around with POV in a short story I'm working on, trying to decide if it's worthwhile to tell the story from different angles. Here's something from the POV of the father:

Who else can I still be, you ask? Lots of things. At first, after my wife's death, I thougth I couldn't be anything. I thought I'd just live quietly, avoiding thinking about the fact that the bitch was cheating on me. (I hate to think of my late wife like that--as a bitch or as a cheater. But I know that the latter, at least, is true.) And then Susan, my daughter--my too smart for her own good daughter--had to nose around and discover June's affair. Once someone else knew, I couldn't be quiet anymore.
First, brandy started disappearing from my liquor cabinet and landing in my belly at an alarming rate. Then I started skipping days at work. I'm a professor, and it's summer, so it's not like any one would notice if most of us took off for a few days. But I work all summer, all day. That's why my secretary came looking for me at my house on her lunchbreak when I didn't show up or return her calls for two days in the week after Susan left.
Until she showed up in my living room, I never thought of Patty as a real person. She was a good secretary--dependable, smart. I didn't know much about her personal life, other than the fact that she was a single mom to a 12 year old boy. But that day I learned an awful lot about Patty, an awful lot. And since then I've learned a lot about lots of women. More than I ever had before. The only one I'm sorry for is Torrey, a former student who came by to say hello. Yes, she's old enough to not get me in legal trouble, but I should've known better. But god, to see that young skin again! And to realize how little I appreciated it when I had young skin of my own.
So who can I be? I can be anyone. I've got a get out of jail free card--a dead, cheating wife-- that allows me to get away with just about anything, at least for a little while.

New story ideas

I would love some comments on the two writing projects I am contemplating:

I was thinking that it might be interesting to explore some other angles of the story that I just wrote. (It was a first-person story from the POV of a young woman, Susan, whose mother had just died. Susan discovers her mother was having an affair of sorts. Meeting with that man helps Susan figure out what to do with her own broken marriage.)

For example, showing how the death of the mother, June, and the discovery of the affair affects the rest of the family's lives. The stories could be told from the first-person POV of the father, and maybe the sister and aunt too. It might become a group of linked short stories. I seem to have a feel for the dad's voice right now. So maybe I'll start doodling on that.

I've also been trying to think of a bigger project (I'd say novel, but that seems kinda scary). I know I want it to include dogs in some way, since I am so in love with them and I think that animals lend an interesting something to stories. So here are my very vague thoughts:

• A woman who has just gotten divorced or widowed moves to a new town for a fresh start. She doesn't have a job yet, but has money from the divorce settlement/life insurance.
  
• She's not sure what to do with herself, somehow finds herself at the local animal shelter--maybe a dog gets thrown off a truck near her house and she brings him in.
  
• She ends up volunteering there, and through her interactions with the staff, people bringing in/picking up animals, and the animals themselves, she heals from her heartbreak.
  
• There will be one dog who she is particularly attached to--maybe the one who got thrown onto her lawn--but she doesn't want to adopt him for some reason. Maybe she feels too unstable to promise to take care of a dog for 10+ years. We'll follow that dog through a few placements with families that don't work out. Suspense will be created in that we'll want to know what happens to him.
  
• I obviously need more stuff to happen to sustain a novel, but hopefully this is an OK start.
  

Anxiety dreams

I had two fairly typical anxiety dreams last night (coupled with some very frustrating insomnia). In one dream that repeated itself throughout the night, I was trying to catch an international flight and kept on getting thwarted by various things: my cab was late, I couldn't find my passport, I couldn't find my airline's gate, etc.

In the second dream, I was criticizing a friend of a friend, and he said to me, "Well, look at you! Look what you've done to your hair!" I was shocked speachless until I saw myself in a mirror and I had a very blond, very messy bouffant.

Why am I sharing this? Because in writing back to Fatcharlatan in my last post, I realized why I was having them: I'm really, really nervous to see my mentor's comments on my work! I have no idea what to expect. And clearly uncomfort with that unknowing is invading my psyche. Any other Lesley-ers having these feelings, or am I just crazy(er)?

New MFA schedule

So I've been slacking a bit this week, assuming that I'd be getting comments from my advisor soon and at that point I would really start working again. Thankfully, I looked at the MFA schedule today and realized that I won't get comments from her until Aug. 21! That seems a bit crazy since we have to hand in our next submission by Sept. 4. And since my next submission is a revision of my first, I can't even start it until I know what she wants me to revise. So it looks like I'll be spending my vacation week working on my story. Kinda ironic considering my last post... But anyway, here's my new schedule:


By August 21: Have all three creative writing class scripts and handouts done. That basically means I'll be working my a$$ off on them next week since I'll be away the weekend of the 19/20.

By Aug 25 (the day before I leave for vacation): Have one annotation done, have an outline or some sort of plan for revising my story

Week of vacation: Read 2nd craft annotation book and write critique. Revise, revise, revise.

Crazy Americans

I just don't get it. Why are we so work-obsessed? I read just read this article in the NY Times about how Americans are not using up all their measly vacation days, and those who do go away take work with them. The worst part? All of this is self imposed! People say they do it because they feel like they're indispensible (yeah, right) and they want to prove how hard they work.

I was just thinking that it was a bad idea to plan my own vacation for the last week of August because it was too long a wait to get there. I can't imagine how cranky I would be if I never took a vacation, or took my work with me. Why can't people realize that work does not equal life? It makes me so sad.

Read any good books lately?

I'm in a dry spell with books. I'm reading a few right now, but nothing that I'm super, duper into. Anyone have any recommendations for fabulous books (new or old, fiction or non)?

Beautiful, blah day

Despite the wonderful weather, I'm feeling a bit blah today. I'm wondering if it has to do with having sent my story out to my mentor. Now all I have to do is wait and imagine how much she is hating it. :)

In an effort to get over my funk and to keep productive, I was thinking I could:

• Think about the next story I want to write (though my next submission will be a revision of my first story, so I don't have a real push to get another started immediately)
• Think about, gulp, a novel idea I'm throwing around. I decided to abandon my first novel idea (sadly) when I realized it didn't really have enough drama, action, whatever you want to call it to sustain a whole book. It's now the short story I recently handed in. This newer idea *could* work, I think. Though I have no idea where it's going and I really need to get to know my characters. Maybe I'll work on that in these few days of downtime between submssions.
  

As you can probably see, I'm not too good with downtime. I'm trying to work on that. I
just have a hard time letting myself relax without feeling bored or unproductive.
Anyhoo... don't want this post to be too much of a therapy session! I'm off to Starbucks to
journal away my lunch hour. I know they're a big evil corporation, but something about
their stores is just soothing.

Word cloud

Poet mom introduced me to this cool site where you enter the name of a web site and it creates a "word cloud" made up of the words that appear most often on the site. What's neat is that if I were to list the things that are important to me, they're all words that appear in bold, big type in my cloud: Brian, Bug (which is Brian and my nickname for each other), Chloe, friend, home, husband, love, story, weekend, work, writing. The only thing I might add is ice cream. And coffee. Maybe I need to start blogging about food more often.

First submission: done!

As I'm sure is true for all my fellow Lesley MFAers, I emailed out my submission packets yesterday. I thought I'd give myself a little review here of things I did well this month, and things I could do better next time (keeping in mind that one of my current goals is to not be so damn hard on myself).

+

• I metered out the work over the month to avoid a crazy crunch time
• I devoted a lot of mental energy to my writing
• I really made my projects a priority, even--gasp--saying no to a bunch of things to give myself the time I needed
• I shared the fact that I'm doing all this creative work with other people, which I've been reluctant to do in the past
  

-

• I didn't devote as much energy to my interdisc project (creating a creative writing class syllabus) as I could've

OK, so even taking away my goal of less self-judgement, I think I did pretty well. :)

A wonderful weekend (to make up for the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day)

Despite getting off to a rocky start, this weekend was quite lovely. The weather was great. I did some fun stuff. Chloe didn't get rushed to the ER.... What more can I ask for?

Friday night, I took an awesome yoga class at JP's wonderful yoga studio and then Brian and I ate Thai food while watching bad TV. Saturday I met my friend Amy for some coffee, planted some flowers, and then got a manicure/pedicure with my friend Kerry before she took me out for a belated birthday dinner. We went to P.F. Changs and sat outside and had yummy food and even yummier drinks (the Key Lime martini is my new favorite thing).

Today I met up with some old colleagues--and fellow bloggers, bostonerin and poetmom-- from when I interned at Houghton Mifflin for a delicious brunch. And the best part is that since we had been reading each others' blogs, the fact that I hadn't seen them in years didn't matter a bit. Then Brian and I took advantage of the weather and rode our bikes around for a while and then had some wine and snacks at an outdoor bar in JP.

A nice weekend all around. :)

Sunday scribblings

I love this week's Sunday Scribbling prompt: Who else might I have been? It's a question I think about occasionally, and I find it fascinating to wonder about how different my life might be if I had taken a different path. I like to assume I'd be the same me, but I'm realizing while it's true that people are fundamentally who they are despite their circumstances, there are lots of small idiosyncrasies that can get changed depending on what's going on around them. Enough babbling. Here's my post:

If I moved to New York

I always assumed that Boston would be a brief layover in my life. I'd come here for college, maybe stay for a year afterwards. And then I'd head to back to New York. Not the Long Island where I grew up--I'd live in Manhattan. I'd probably share an apartment with my best friend from high school. We'd be working in publishing, so we'd eat lots of pb&js and mac and cheese. We'd save our money for the important things: going out. To bars, to concerts, to everything. We'd spend summer weekends in the Hamptons, invited by guys who fell in love with us instantly. But we wouldn't be worried about loving them. We'd just love their house, their car that could get us out of the sweltering city for a few days. We'd be in (platonic) love with each other, and with life.

In my imaginations, I never think about the fact that we'd probably have to live in a sketchy neighborhood, that we'd probably have mice, and that she did live this life and is no longer someone I want to be best friends with.

Bug & the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

My friend Mary at work is about to have a baby, and I organized her office shower. I decided to buy her a lot of baby books from our office to furnish her baby library. One I chose was: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

This seemed apt to me this morning when I was walking my lovely Chloe and I noticed that her stomach was pooched out a bit. The more I looked at it, I realized it was pooched out a lot. So I took her home. She wouldn't eat. I called the vet, who said to bring her in immediately. Apparently bloat is a big problem in dogs, and it can be caused by some serious intestinal problems that can be deadly. So, Brian, Chloe, and I go rushing off to the vet. But before we even get to the car, I fall down the stairs, which were slippery from the rain.

The vet discovers that all of Chloe's bloat (thankfully) is caused by pounds and pounds of food in her stomach--apparently she got into her food bag last night. So $300 later... Chloe and I have to walk home because Brian needed to drop us off and get to work. In the middle of our walk, it starts hailing.

Then I get home and figure, well, one good thing is that I can spend the rest of the afternoon working at home (Chloe can't be left alone yet). And then I discover I can't! I have a work deadline that I can't miss. So now Brian has to come home, and I have to go to work.

Is it Saturday yet??

Chuggin along

Not much to say... Just chuggin along, revising my story. I *think* I solved some major plot problems with the help of one very loving and astute reader, my husband Brian. Hopefully my timeline of events makes more sense now.

I also read the story aloud, which helped me recognize some wording issues. I'm too tired now, but I need to edit out a bunch of times when characters smile during conversations, and when they stare at things. I have way too many of those. Then I'll do another read aloud and hopefully it'll be ready to send to my mentor.

Stories with great characters--help

For the creative writing class I am creating for my MFA program, I am assigning short stories to the class to study particular elements of story. Does anyone have any favorites where the characters are particularly well-drawn?

The little things in life

Despite the ridiculous humidity, I'm having a really good hair day. Just thought I'd share this minor victory with the blog-world. :)