MAY 16th IN HISTORY

 

Many events happened on May 16^th. Some tragic, (the quelling of the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943) and some that revolutionized our world, (Theodore Maiman made the first laser operate at the Hughes Research Laboratory in California, by shining a high-power flash lamp on a ruby rod with silver-coated surfaces, 1960) and so many more.

 

But my focus landed today on another event that happened May 16^th. The first Academy Awards were presented. (1929)

 

Why would my mind focus on such a nothing thing? You’d be just to wonder about my brain’s degree of feebleness. Could the current Hollywood writers' strike be ringing my bell? Not really, though there's a tenuous connection. Hear me out.

 

The OSCARS, as we have come to call these yearly bashes, are a strange thing when you bother to think and really contemplate them. Displays of vanity and self-congratulations of an industry most of us consume but are not part of. They are also too long and much of these evenings are clunkily not entertaining. And yet---

And yet, many millions the world over watch them live.

 

What started as a fifteen-minute presentation and dinner at a Los Angeles hotel (the Hollywood Roosevelt) with nicely dressed people, has grown into a global event that testifies to one thing: The American cultural power grip. It’s monumental, actually.

Love it or not, it is what it is. We didn’t need to wear T-shirts that screamed “America First.” The Oscars said it for us.

 

It’s also significant that they are losing their audience in recent years. Maybe this is another testament that our cultural dominance is waning.

 

History is like that. Mileposts to mark rises, falls, and the long road keeps on keeping on.

MINI-MILES

 

In life, there are major celebratory milestones. The day you got engaged, married, realized you were expecting a child, the day your child was born, and more.

Anyone can recognize these, and everyone you share it with gets it. These are monumental moments.

Then, there are the mini monuments. These are just as meaningful, but in a private way. The day you first realized you were in love with a pimply classmate, the day you first got your period, or the day your child told you they loved you more than ice-cream. Even if shared, these moments would not feel monumental to most others.

 

It is the same for the writing journey.

 

The big milestones everyone recognizes—

*The day you get a reputable literary agent (Been there 😊)

*The day your manuscript goes to acquisitions (Been there 😅)

* The day you have a traditional paying offer to publication (Been there 😲)

*The day your book comes out (Been there 😀)

*The day you get your first unsolicited good review (Been there 😄)

*The day you get the first advance check (Been there 😉)

*The day one of your books hits the best sellers list (Never been there and can’t manage to imagine 😜)

 

And then, there are the mini-milestones, ones that only another writer can understand. They are also grand, but only a few could possibly “get it”—

*The day you finish a first draft to a novel 🙌

*The day you manage to fix a serious plot hole that seemed fatal only a day earlier 👍

*The day you overcame a state of ennui as you drafted, because you realized what the story is really about 👈

*Any of the days you managed to pen a nifty (though dreaded) synopsis of your work 😇

 

Been there, to all the mini milestones above, many times. It never gets old.

 

 

All of the above are felt deeply, but the celebration goes on with you and only your writing friends, if you choose to share.

Oh, No. Not about them* RULES, Again

 

*Yup, I know the extra ‘m’ is not grammatical. I’m making a point

 

Some months ago in a writerly Facebook group, someone lamented at her discovery while editing her own work. “Turns out,” she wrote, “I’m a fan of passive writing and telling not showing.” 😰

While I’m paraphrasing and also omitting some of her original pulling-one’s-own-hair in-shame post, I will quote my response post in full because I don’t need my own permission to quote me:

 

“Passive construction and telling have their place. Just make sure they don't sit and stay where they are not serving their purpose. Passive is what you use when you want to fuzzy something and cover with fog. (Someone *was killed,* no idea by whom.)

Telling is an economical way to get through parts so the showing parts get to shine by contrast.”

 

The first writerly mistake is not knowing the rules and why they’re there. The second is to treat writing advice as absolute. 

You can quote me on it. 👆

 

Getting off the preacher’s pedestal now.

SEASONS and SEASONINGS

 

Where I live, in California’s bay area, there is basically only one season.

Lucky us, the season is SPRING.

It goes something like this:

Bay area summer = Spring with morning fog

Bay area fall = Spring without the morning fog

Bay area winter = Spring with some rain

Bay area spring = well, just spring

I have dealt with this boring blessing by creating seasonality in artificial ways.

Example—

I change the bed’s quilt, and thus my bed reflects seasonality.

SUMMER^

FALL^

WINTER^

SPRING^

The cats are perennial.

 

It occurred to me that the stories I write are similar. My life is a steady road with mini-bumps for variety. The stories are life accentuated, outlined, marked with eye-popping swatches of drama.

The bed frame is akin to the daily discipline of writing, and the cats (i.e., the stand-ins for the narrator who is me) are the constant sentient beings. The quilts serve to delineate the titles from each other. 

Thus, stories are life with spicy seasoning.

🌻Happy Spring🌻

Welcome March

     

& Keep Marching

The month we’re ushering in, March, gets its name from Mars, the Roman god of war. The Roman calendar actually began with the month of March. Leave it to the Romans, those talented empire builders, to start off with war.

 

It is the pronunciation in English that gives it an added feel. MARCH, as in to march, evokes movement. Not just any movement, but the rhythmic kind that propels forward.

 

And this we must do. Walking backwards is something we do when we reminisce, delve into history and read fiction set in past eras. It’s a mental glide backwards, something that deepens understanding and cements ownership of acquired emotions.

 

On the level of action, the single most important thing to do is to bravely march forward, open to the unknown. Storytellers attempt to unveil the future with utopic and dystopic stories, but those are just attempts to quell the fear of what the next steps hold.

 

As it turns out, these stories are mostly unsuccessful as future times bear out. Sure, some futuristic stories turned out to have prescience. So have some religious prophecies. But most did not. We just forgot about the majority that didn’t, and kept marching.

 

Which is my order to self today, as the first of March happens to also be my birthday: get up and march.