HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Thomas Edison

 

Thomas Edison should be the lodestar to every person who ever heard the victimization narrative and fell for it.

Don’t.

Just don’t buy it. Because if you do, you will have victimized yourself times ten.

 

 

Thomas Edison was almost deaf.

He had only a few months of formal schooling.

He started working at age 12.

He was viewed as “odd.”

He didn’t come from any ruling elite or so-called “right families.”

 

 

He went on to be the holder of (arguably) more patents than anyone, and we owe him much of what is fueling the engines of modern technology, not least of which is what is driving this blog I am typing on right now.

 

Which is a good reason to celebrate his birthday, February 11^th, not with gratitude for Edison's inventions but as a reminder not to focus on the obstacles life deals us. Instead, let's celebrate the amazing opportunities that being alive presents.

POINT OF VIEW (aka POV)

 

The voice of a story comes to me in the form of a line. For me, it’s usually the first sentence/paragraph.

 

This line also contains the point of view. I don’t recall ever “choosing” it, it chose itself.

 

This post explains how pivotal the POV is to the rest of the story. It is more important than plot points or list of characters or even theme. The first two evolve and change as one drafts and later revises, the last emerges on its own if the story is worth its salt and pepper.

 

But the POV determines almost everything, and if (unlike me) you aren’t seeing it clearly and wonder whose it is, consider how much difference it would make if the narrative thread is seen from, say, Aunt Olga’s vantage point or Cousin Vladimir’s. It makes all the difference.

 

There is also the so-called omniscient POV, less humbly called G-d’s. I don’t write this all-seeing POV because 1. I don’t know how to do it justice, and 2. The remove feel of it doesn’t drive my writerly engine.

Long ago, a writing friend asked me to read part of a novel she was working on and asked if the POV was omniscient.

“Actually, it isn’t. It’s ‘head hopping’,” I said.

Head hopping is moving from different characters inner most awareness without so much as taking a breath, which causes a jumble and disjointed state in a reader. Omniscience requires some remove. A lot of novice writers confuse the two.

My friend resolved to pick one character’s vantage point and stick with it.

 

When writing in first person, it’s clear whose POV it is. When writing in third person, it’s important not to stray from what the character could know or see or even overhear. If more than one POV is needed, there are good novels that alternate different chapters clearly marked for changing the POV. A classic example of multiple POV is The View from Saturday by E.L. Konigsburg.

 

I will continue to let my stories choose, because it works for the way I work.

POV^

Need a Break from DYSFUNCTION?

 

A few months ago, I realized that between the news (wars, crimes, the latest pathogens and some petty pointless bit—ing about others), and the sort of movies and TV shows I was watching, which were mostly about dysfunction (wars, crime stories, pandemics and plenty bi---ing), it was taking a negative toll on my psyche.

 

Sure, it was compelling, and it is an aspect of the human story. But I needed some medicine to balance this out.

 

And so, I have been making the effort to pay attention to basically good people doing or trying to do good things. Flawed people, (is there any other kind?) but decent and with a conscience that is alive and serves to guide.

 

I like THIS IS US (now all seasons streaming on Netflix) and novels like ASK AGAIN, YES by Mary Beth Keane. If you have recommendations for some such, I am as wide open as ever.

 

Let the light of humanity pour in~

©Art by Shelagh Duffett

EVOCATIVE

 

The very word, “evocative,” is evocative.

 

The dictionary definition, “Serving to bring to mind. Making you remember or imagine something,” brings up feelings of hazy memories one can’t quite place or anchor.

 

Good poetry is supremely evocative. Good prose is subtly so. Good music evokes on the most sensual level, as do smells and even certain qualities of light.

 

I was mulling over a Leonard Cohen song, AVALANCHE, whose words I find evocative. But— blimey— if I know what they mean. I just know that the many attempts to analyze it fall flat. From the literal to the highfalutin theses I read, none touch what this song evokes in me, which is dread and impending doom.

 

This is but one example. I find James Joyce’s Ulysses evocative, but also unreadable. I wonder if, on some level, he meant it to be. A sort of hiding in plain sight.

 

I’m not this sort of writer, but I am intrigued by evocative writing.   

“IF YOU COULD MEET ANYONE FROM HISTORY…”

 

There’s a well-known trope/parlor game/interview question that asks which long-dead persons you’d like to meet, have dinner with, interview, etc.

 

It’s fun to think about, and the answer supposedly reveals something pertinent about us.

 

About a month ago, someone put this question to me and I realized my older answers didn’t hold for me anymore. My old answers were Shakespeare (did he really author what is attributed to him?), Jesus (what was the historic flesh-and-blood person really like?), and Abraham (Is he in fact one actual person, or a myth?).

 

But I realized that Shakespeare would almost certainly be a disappointment. The works are far greater than the author, as is almost always the case. Jesus of Nazareth is also far greater as spiritual residues present to this day. As to Abraham, I would likely not like him at all and he not like me. Anyone who would sacrifice his beloved son Isaac and lie to his boy while climbing to the place of the intended killing (all to prove his complete obedience to G-d) is the sort of fanatic I avoid like the plague today.

 

Then, they came to me like figures emerging out of a thick fog. The people I would most like to meet and spend a day with, the people I would like to get to know and be known by, are my father’s mother and father. They perished in the Holocaust and the Nazis wouldn’t allow my father, still a boy himself, to keep even the locket he wore with his mother’s photograph.

 

What I know of them are the memories of a boy. When I asked my late father to describe them physically, he gave such a vague description that I couldn’t conjure their faces. Years later, when my father returned for a visit to Poland and found a neighbor he remembered from his childhood still living in the old building, the neighbor angrily snapped at him saying, “What Jews? There were never any Jews here.” He had hoped someone had photos of his family, but instead found complete erasure.  

 

If you believe in the afterlife, you might be telling me that I will meet my grandparents some day. You might be telling me that they are watching over me right now. I won’t argue. It’s a mystery, as far as I’m concerned.

 

But today I would choose to meet them while I’m still part of this world of action, because I sense it would inform the rest of my time here in a meaningful way.

AH-HA! MOMENTS

 

One of the powerful tools in storytelling is the Ah-Ha! Moment.

 

It’s a character recognizing their fault, or not their fault, and how to carry on doing better.

 

These are powerful moments in real life, also. For reflective people, these recognitions are numerous, and not nearly as dramatic. But in the context of story, they are crescendos that lead to the stories’ climax resolutions.

 

Just this morning, a stranger who had parked their car in front of our driveway (blocking my ability to use my car) said I was “impatient” when I asked him to move. I did what I always do, covering up my frustration with a smile and asking how long it would be before he would, you know, pretty please, free our driveway. He said, “not long,” and I walked away.

 

But I was seething. Underneath my practiced non-confrontational smile, I thought--- The nerve of him. Not for blocking my driveway, but for calling me “impatient.”

 

But even before he did move on, twenty minutes later, I realized he was right. I was impatient. I didn’t need to use my car right then, I could wait. If I had an appointment to get to, I’d explain, and he (probably, hopefully) would have moved. Going to the store this morning was not an urgent matter, and I was simply being impatient.

 

This complete stranger called it. If patience is virtue, (and I believe it is) I need to work on it.

 

This tiny lightbulb moment got me thinking about my fictional characters, and their moments of illumination.

Let there be light~

HAPPY TO BE READ

 

Back to answering another from Karen Jones’s blog post list:

Are you excited about the idea of people reading your work…?

I have always had “people” reading my writing, whether they were my teachers or family members or friends. I know what Karen means, though. She means people I never met and likely never will-- except as readers.

 

My first published essay was in eighth grade. It was, as we used to say, a “heady experience.” Many years later, I began blogging. The few strangers who responded to my early posts quickly became on-line acquaintances.

 

But the first review I got to my published novel, The Voice of Thunder, brought people who were strangers to this day. This, like my eighth-grade essay, was “heady”. I imagine that multi-published writers who have wide readership have a more nonchalant feelings for the experience of complete strangers reading what they wrote. We humans adjust to most things that are not common and then become a new normal for us.

 

Few in the human family, which numbers in the many billions, become so-called famous. But for the famous (“celebrities,” how I dislike the word) it is just what is. Fame itself feels undesirable an existence to me. For the famous who don’t crash and burn, it is just the way it is.

 

So, the answer to the question is two-pronged: I find a reaction to my writing from a total stranger to quicken my heartbeats, but only for a bit, and then I adjust and it is how it is, part of the package of writing for publication.

 

Excitement is an ephemeral thing. It happens, and then it’s gone.