Tuesday Chatter-Becoming Real

I managed to skip last Friday's Rambles. Sorry. I was away from home all day at a Christmas Fair, and managing to sell a book or two. I meant to come home and post a Ramble, but was just too tired. I was glad I did set up at the Fair, though. Saw and talked to some people I hadn't seen for a while - a long while for some of them. Saw another vendor who remembered me from several years back at another event. Saw many beautiful hand-crafted items. Reminded me again how sadly lacking I am in the talent of producing pretties. So happy there are those who excel in that department. I try to produce words that interest people, though. The column below chronicles my journey to being willing to expose those words to any who cared to read them. I am thankful for those who take that chance.

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My mother would tell a story about my baby days when I must have been around eighteen months. We would visit a neighbor or relative's house. After a few hours my toddler self would apparently grow tired and try to reach my cap and coat, crying to go home. Did my feelings of being 'out of step' with my surroundings most of the time begin there? Through the years I always felt more secure at home with my family. Which to me is a good thing. We all need somewhere to feel safe.
    My two-years-older sister was a fearful child. She was very reluctant to attend school alone when she started first grade while we lived in Alabama. By then I had become more social, so the next fall when she began second grade, though I was only five, mother enrolled me in first grade. I doubt I had much understanding about being younger than my classmates then. But that changed by the end of the school year when we moved and my Georgia first grade teacher early promoted me to second grade. So when I entered third grade I was only six years old, effectively a little more than two years younger than all my classmates.
    My family moved a lot. I'd attended eight or so different schools by the time I entered high school. Added to that, my dad being a sharecropper and mill worker, we were always among the poor children. In actual fact, since this was during the country's recovery from what is called 'the great depression', most of the student body at the schools came from poor families.
    I expect being so much younger than my school contemporaries was the main reason I identified with Henry David Thoreau's, "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears the beat of a different drummer." Later in life I resisted feeling I needed to be like everyone else. I'm afraid I often escaped actual life through reading, when I wanted to write. Only as an older adult was I brave enough to seek out other writers, reveal my 'real' self, through my own writing, in my books, this column.

Tuesday Chatter-Scars

I enjoy writing about the writers group I've been blessed to be part of for nearly twenty years. As might be expected, to hang around with one group that long, it must be a pretty compatible group. And it is. Many of them have been around longer than I. Because they accepted me as a bona fide author when even I wasn't sure if I qualified, I will forever be grateful. For some unfathomable reason, for the last six years or so I've been their purported leader. Actually co-leader as a committee of four others ably assist me. And writing exercises similar to the one I wrote about below happen regularly. May they keep happening as we travel this road together.

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    Most people have scars. Some are from accidents. Some from prior surgeries. Some deliberately acquired. This last saddens me.

    A couple of years ago I handed out a list of five story idea prompts for a writing exercise at a writers guild meeting. Of those present probably ten or so participated and wrote short pieces which most shared with the group. One of the prompts involved telling the story of how you received a scar. Any kind of scar, not necessarily physical. Of the respondents, fully half had chosen the prompt about a scar. This surprised me.

    My own scar is minor. And though it is on my face, can only be seen when the light hits it a certain way. In the distant past of my childhood Coca Cola, as well as other soft drinks, was sold in six ounce glass bottles. If you've ever seen one of them, you know the rim at the top of the bottle's neck was thicker than the rest of the bottle. Somehow the boys at my school managed to remove that glass rim and wear it on a finger as a ring. God alone knows why. I was a tiny first grader, just the right height for the glass ring on one of those tall country farm boys to accidentally strike across my nose as I ran down the hall among them. It bled copiously and I was taken to the doctor and then home, but I had no long-term ill effects. No law suit was filed either.

    Maybe those of us who have scars long to confide in someone about how we received them. I can't remember any specific stories that the writers told that day. Just that some were actual physical scars, like mine. One or two were psychological scars. This surprised me, too. Psychological scars are the ones we're most prone to keep close, not want to tell anyone about. I believe the fact that they were wiling to share these personal stories speaks to the trust this group of writers have in each other.

    Since I have inherited co-leadership of the group, my hope is that this atmosphere of trust and support will continue for a long time.

Tuesday Chatter-New Plot?

Yep, still searching for that elusive plot which will catapult my new book (if I get it written) to the top of the best selling heap. Not likely? That's right. Plot alone will not a best seller make. Readers want to find a character they can sympathize with, maybe even identify with. At least so we writers are told. And since that is true for me, I bet it is for many other readers. No namby pamby character, either, he or she must be ready and willing to fight for what he or she wants. I expect even readers who don't exhibit that characteristic want to read about characters who do own it. Do my characters have it? I'm not sure I know. I hope so. And if not, I hope readers will tell me so I can try to improve.

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   Many of us writers wrack our brains to think up new plots for our deathless prose. Forget it. It’s all been done. The best a modern writer can hope for is to put a new twist on a good old plot.
What 90's television sci-fi adventure series and fifties comedy series have the same plot structure? Give up? Gilligan’s Island and Star Trek Voyager are the two, though they are wildly different on the surface.
   The Captain, Gilligan and a half dozen or so pleasure yacht passengers only expected to be on their trip through balmy waters for three hours. The one hundred eighty nine member crew, and their holographic doctor, on Voyager started a shakedown cruise in space. They thought they’d be among the stars for a few days at most. In both cases, an unexpected calamity extended their trips far longer than their expectations. Though probably the actors, writers, producers, etc were quite happy those trips lasted as long as they did.
   Several books and columns on writing that I’ve read recently suggest taking a look at the classics for inspiration if you’re stuck on what to write about. The premise of star crossed lovers, such as Romeo and Juliet, is at the base of a lot of romance stories and novels. One of the most notable that comes to mind was printed over twenty years ago The Bridges of Madison County was, unexpectedly, a wildly popular tiny book. Though mostly we moderns like for the lovers to wind up still alive, and together, by the end of the book.
   Sherlock Holmes would probably retire to a castle in the Highlands if he were a practicing detective these days. He might feel lost among the countless PI’s, former police detectives, caterers, and other women and men of various ages solving crimes in print.
   Readers still love to read about fictional dark deeds of the gentry a la Lady Chatterley’s Lover. A writer’s imagination might have to work overtime to outdo the real life stories available now, and bringing megabuck advances for their first person authors.
   The next time I’m stuck for something to hang a plotline on, I’ll dust off my own modest classics collection or take a trip to the library. Hey, if something worked for Doyle or ol’ Will it’s good enough for me.

Friday Rambles-Writers, Actors and TV

Television is still as popular as when I wrote the column below, about six years ago. I really can't say that the quality has improved, personally it seems the opposite is true. Be that as it may, my viewing habits are still about the same, though what I watch is received via air channels, not cable or satellite. I do miss the music channels, but the two or three I listened to are not worth the annual small fortune I'd have to pay to receive them. Mostly I watch old television series hits during the still less than twenty hours a week I turn on the set. Only on Wednesdays do I indulge in a current craze-binge watching. I loved JAG when it was a prime time series for several years and still do. So I have enjoyed JAG reruns on MeTV's 'The Dayshift' this summer. Sigh. The network will probably end the series before I'm ready to let them go again.
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 I seem to write about television regularly for one who, on average, watches it probably twenty hours a week, compared to the thirty-five to forty national average. Fifteen to twenty minutes of my daily tv fare is watching local news and weather. I almost always switch it off or to a music channel rather than watch the sports reports. My household was chosen recently to keep a Nielsen journal for a week. It would probably be a safe bet to say we were one of the far outliers toward the zero end of television watching.
    I attempt to keep in mind when and on which channels my favorite shows are scheduled and turn the set on at those times. I seem to have lost track of the summer replacement Rookie Blue. I watched the first couple of episodes but don't remember what day. If any reader watches it, please let me know.
    I'm also pretty set in my ways about the authors I read. One of those favorites is David Baldacci, who just happens to be a Virginian who hails from Charlottesville, I believe. Several of his books formed a series with ex-Secret Service agents Sean King and Michelle Maxwell, who both resigned when the persons they were assigned to protect were killed. After five books I could find no more and wondered if Baldacci was finished with the pair.
    Then I saw a commercial during my limited hours of television. King and Maxwell were coming to the home screen in a new series called King and Maxwell. I caught the first episode, almost by accident. I was and am delighted, if I can only remember when the show comes on! Part of my delight is because of the actor cast as Sean King. I've been a fan of Jon Tenney since he was Kyra Sedgwick's FBI boyfriend and later her husband on the long-running The Closer series. When Sedgwick left, by choice or not I don't know, that show morphed into one called Major Crimes. I do not watch it even though many of the same characters did stay. To me, Sedgwick was the show. Maybe because I've lived in Alabama and her character moved to California from Alabama.