NEVER RUN OUT OF STORIES

 

Our lives are filled with possibilities that haven’t materialized. Stories are conjured of things that do.

 

      When the story-well feels empty, I think of it this way:

1.      Here are the blessings I have. (I count them). Blessings do not make for story-hooks, but I need to do this in order to take the next step.

2.      Here are the frustrations and lackings I experience. (I list them)

      Every one of the items on the lacking list begs for a “what if...”

{As in what if instead of having an editor pass on my manuscript, it got multiple offers. Or what if instead of having my old clunker of a car stolen, I won a brand new one in a raffle and got to donate the old one to someone who needed it.}

 

Most of the what-ifs are stories. My mind lets the possibilities in. Starting from the point of lack, and moving through challenges, to a point of either triumph or acceptance of the lack, which is an inner triumph.

 

I didn’t develop this exercise in order to think up story ideas; it’s something I always did naturally. But it also assures I will never run out of ideas.

Unless, of course, I find myself counting my blessings and having not a single lack.

Well, that’s not going to happen. Nevermore.

Managing Time

a.k.a “Time-management”

“Where did the time go?”

“Forwards, darling. Always forward.”

Time marches in one direction and, except for sojourns of the mind, don’t believe the physicists who tell you it’s the fourth dimension and as such it is a line you can move your dot on in either direction. Those same scientists also say the earth is round and, hey, it looks pretty flat to me.

My jesting way of saying our experience is that time runs like sand through our sieving hands.

Some years ago, I was blessed with finding a personal key to managing time. It came just in time, (pun intended) when my life became impossible to manage as a classic “sandwich generation” mom and daughter. But I had the tools, and by golly, I managed to take care of all my responsibilities and also write original fiction.

The key, for me, was to set a daily schedule of the minimal I must get done, and make it utterly doable. If anything, make it “under-ambitious,” so tackling the day’s tasks was not daunting. This is a system set for a marathon, not a sprint. I not only got the “must-do” done, I was less stressed about my time.

And here’s the secret kicker: always leave some time for nothing. That is nothing planned, where I can do nothing, do something I want to do, or attend to the inevitable emergencies that pop up. Nothing Time is sacred, and it is part of time management success.

With the rare exceptions of chaotic days (I take that possibility for granted), this system works for me to this day. Time moves forward, and I’m gliding on it.

I hope you find what works for you, so you don’t look back and say you didn’t get to do something you always wanted to do because you didn’t have the time.

Cultural Appropriation

The other day I ran into Rona.*

*(name changed)

Rona was a girl I knew in one of my children’s classes. Rona has changed a lot. Rona is now going by Ron. They are transitioning.

I wish them well. People seek their authentic selves all their lives, and there are many ways to that. But something occurred to me right then and there. There is nothing inside my being that has insight into this particular transition.

Oh, sure. Like most humans, there were parts of my physic that I wished were different at various times, though this has lessened greatly as I gained in years. Who hasn’t wanted a different nose/eye color/height or whatever? But the feeling of being in the wrong body was never one I had.

Which brought another insight: I could never write such a fictional character from the inside. I could and would write characters who are very different from me, but only as secondary characters, the way a main character whose inner world is one I know intimately, experiences them. We encounter and appreciate many people as we live, and my main characters will also. But it is the inner world, or point of view, (POV) that will remain someone I can vouch for.

This means that a black/Asian/Muslim/Trans character will not be the POV (first person or third person personal) for a story I will write. I’m guessing this is what the cry about cultural appropriation in fiction is about, and to that extent, I understand it.

But I do not begrudge any writer of fiction who does attempt this, because here also we must allow others to tackle what they feel strongly about. If they do so convincingly, that’s just fine with me.

And, in the end, there is no end to appropriation in fiction: main characters who are male written by female writers, (and vice versa) or a story taking place at a time so long ago the writer couldn’t have lived it except in their mind. It’s fiction.

I just don’t think I could do it well, so I will strive to appreciate but not appropriate.

©Luis Rodriguez 2018

Galileo and the Scientific Truth

On this date, February 26, in the year of our Lord 1616, Galileo Galilei was formerly banned by the Roman Catholic Church from teaching or defending the view that the earth orbits the sun.

Now, I am not anti-Catholic (emphatically not) or anti-religious. The church had its reasons, with worry that challenging this dogma would lead to questioning all dogmas, an unstoppable process. Indeed, history showed this fear to be justified, and the loss of dogmatic faith that had already begun then, continues to this day. The church had reasons to fear that the baby will be thrown out with the bathwater, an expression so vivid I’m using it despite it being a cliché.

The thing is, four centuries later and a formal reversal of this ban by the church itself, we still ban thinking that we fear will lead to abuses of the social fabric and result in hurtful conduct. Only now, it is happening in the name of freethinking.

We haven’t changed. We’re still terrified of our own species propensity to abuse one another, and in the name of protecting us from ourselves we fire/take-down/ban/shun uncomfortable ideas.

I know real tolerance and considered debate when I see it. We’re not there yet.

Saluting the brave Galileos out there. You give humanity some hope.

Writerly Routines

Most folks have routines that get them going no matter what sort of work they do.

Most writers I know, or know of, do their creative work in the morning. If writing is in addition to their day job, this means very early morning.

No matter when or what, routines help. It’s unglamorous. Admitting that you don’t write drunk into the wee hours of the night with existential despair as page after page is scrapped because you won’t give up until you have something--- doesn't sound arty.
(Oh-so very unlike Dashiell Hammett, at least as depicted in Lillian Hellman’s Pentimento.)

Most writers have a set routine and write no matter where inspiration chooses to dwell any given day. Most workers go to work no matter how enthusiastic they feel at a particular moment. Same thing.

© Luci Gutierrez for the New Yorker

My morning routine is as uninspiring as it is grounding. With small necessary adjustments, it generally goes something like this:

*Woken up by Nougat, one of my three cats. She thinks she’s an alarm clock.

*Thanking her, and thanking G-d for returning my soul to me. It’s a Jewish prayer that sets the day right.

*Making my bed. The other cats come in to help, with great merriment for all.

*Cleaning litter boxes, changing water bowls, filling the food bowls. Felines have priority because of all their help.

*Making strong tea with foamy milk. Drinking it, doing my best to keep cats off the foam.

*A short meditation. It’s supposed to be quiet time, but the cats determine this as well.

*Turn on the computer. Open WORD.

*I’m ON IT.

Two hours or so later, DH gets up and the rest of the day commences. That means coffee, breakfast, and the busy-busy stuff.

Do you have routines to get going?

Blessed Are the Friends

You’ve heard the ubiquitous question, “where do your stories/ideas come from?”

Invariably the sweeping answer is, “everywhere.”

But a truer answer is that different people tend to get ideas in idiosyncratic ways, specific to them.

I know writers who get a lot of stories for fiction novels from newspaper accounts of real life stories.

I know writers who get story ideas while walking and looking at houses, imagining the families who live there.

I know writers who get ideas for fiction from reading others’ fiction, and imagining how much more they’d have done with those stories.

About a year ago, I realized many of my longer stories got their themes or protagonists from a friend of mine. One specific friend. We have our regular walk & talk, and I’d be telling her something I had experienced way back, when she’d say, “why don’t you write your next story about it?”

She is not a writer, but an excellent reader. I owe the last five MG novel themes to her.