One of these days, I’ll let the dog sleep in the bed.

One of these days, I’ll let the dog sleep in the bed.
Why not?
He’s attentive, caring, devoted.
He follows me around with unabashed admiration and curiosity:
“Where are we going now?
What are you eating? Why are we walking to the laundry room?”

I feed him the same thing, every day.
Yet he is so grateful when I put his food in front of him.
No complaints, just a wagging tail and a busy mouth.

When I’m bored, he lets me play with his paws.
I tickle the little bits of fur sticking out between his foot pads
and even though it torments him, he always brings the paw back.
I toss a stuffed toy for him, and he runs and gets it every time.
“Good boy!” I croon, and he listens, even if he’s heard it all before.

When I’m sad
He lets me cling to him for long minutes at a time,
never shifting or restless
or thinking about what else he could be doing at that moment.
He lets me stop hugging first.
Sometimes he even licks my chin.

When I go out the door in the morning, he rushes towards me
in the hope that he can be my companion for whatever the day might bring.
“Can I come, too? I’ll miss you while you’re gone.”
“No,” I have to tell him. “Stay.”
Sometimes I wish I could open the door wide and take him along.
When I come home, he’s waiting in the same spot for me,
so excited to see me he’s dropped everything just to say “hello.”

At night, when I climb into the bed,
He’ll come and nose my hand before he wanders off to his box
He in his place
me in mine.

One of these days, I’ll let the dog sleep in the bed--
A soft snorting companion to my dreams.

TJB

Haiku

I’m going to be teaching a literature course in the fall, my first ever. It’s been years (none of your business how many) since I earned my masters degree in lit, so I’ve been brushing up a bit. In reading about the poetry genre, I came across the descriptions for haikus, and remembered the haiku poems our teacher had us write in fifth grade. Well, I don’t remember the poems themselves, but in general I remember how much fun they were. Haikus are often like photographs of a moment, captured in present tense word choices. They follow a five-seven-five syllable pattern.

So, just for the heck of it, here are some “picture poems” (as I like to call them) I came up with today.


Haiku #1
A black and white dog
lying helpless and trusting
with his legs spread wide.

Haiku #2
Reaching for ketchup
in the back of the Kenmore.
There isn’t any.

Haiku #3
The scent of mangos
Papayas sweet and shiny
I prefer oranges.


Let’s see some of yours!

TJB

King Kong, or The Movie that Shouldn't Have Been

My husband and I received the DVD King Kong as a gift a couple of months ago, but hadn’t had the time to watch it. Finally, we set aside three hours one night after the kids had gone to bed and settled in for the viewing. We were cautiously excited about it because the director, Peter Jackson, is very popular in our house. We loved the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We hoped to love this movie, too, but we wondered, how can one say anything original the fourth time out of the gate about a big ape who falls in love with a blonde?

Sadly, we discovered that one cannot, even if that one is Mr. Jackson.

While the filmmaker did try to bring a new angle to this tale of “girl meets ape” that eschewed the unsavory sexual undertones of previous versions, going instead for a “owner/pet” relationship between the two (with the girl being the pet), unfortunately that angle was too thin to be stretched over three hours of film. Heroine Ann Darrow, as played by Naomi Watts, was as lovely and emotive an ingénue as any who have played the part, but after watching scene after scene of her trading soulful, silent gazes with Andy Serkis’ Kong, enough was enough.

High adventure is something we expect of a Peter Jackson film, as well, and he made a heroic attempt to deliver. However, the middle hour of the movie appeared to be one long bite-fest, with prehistoric dinosaurs attacking each other, the cast members, and Kong non-stop. After the umpteenth time of Ms. Watts falling into the clutches of yet another beastie and having to be rescued by Kong, it got to the point where we just didn’t care anymore. Like the monk in the Monty Python classic Search for the Holy Grail, we were persuaded to “skip a bit, brother,” and fast forwarded through most of those scenes. When, at the end, Jack Black’s character, movie producer Carl Denham, comments that seventeen shipmates had been killed in the rescue of the heroine, my husband and I were amazed. Really? Only seventeen? So many were dropped into yawning caverns, squashed, or consumed, we thought that surely there had been many more than that.

Finally, the willing suspension of disbelief is a critical element of bringing the audience along for the ride in a fantasy horror film of this ilk. If one can get past the “Jurassic Park meets Godzilla” feel of the film, one still has to believe that after hours of man--er--ape-handling by Kong, the heroine still looked perfect (not a scratch on her). As much as the heroine got whipped around in this film, she would have needed a neck brace, casts, and crutches after she was freed.

We wished this film had lived up to the reputation of the director. At a minimum, the movie could have been seriously edited by at least an hour. A better choice would have been to let sleeping apes lie, and not to have made this remake at all.

Better luck next time, Mr. Jackson.

TJB

A Typical Day

So, I’m driving home the other day after a really long day at work, and I begin to merge onto the freeway. Now, you have to understand where I work--a small college town in East Texas--the freeway is really a long stretch of two-lane road with its own set of rules. If you’re doing less than 80 in the left hand lane, you need to get the heck over or get run over. This is understood. No one will honk at you--that would be considered rude. They will, however, ride your bumper for five miles until you get the message and MOVE OVER. The other rule is, since everyone is pretty much doing 80 all the time, when you merge, you merge fast. Those in the right hand lane when you are attempting to merge need to get the hell out of your way, or slow the hell down to let you in (pardon my French).

So, a big 18 wheeler is in the right lane, far enough back, with no one in the left hand lane to get in its way, when I start to merge onto the freeway. I’m speeding up...and so is he. I check his left hand lane--no cars, so I figure, okay, dude’s gonna pull to the left lane and let me in. He doesn’t. He came up right on my left bumper, and then just kept coming. That idiot ran me off the road right into the breakdown lane! Scared me to death. He didn’t even acknowledge my presence. I was very nearly killed--could have been if I’d lost control of the car, since the breakdown lanes here are pitted to wake you up as you go over them--hard to drive on.

I was ticked! At first, I’m just yelling at the guy, “What are you, nuts?” Then, I happened to see that, unlike most Texas trucks, he’s got one of those little handy “How am I driving?” signs on his back bumper.

Well.

Now, gotta figure, if a man's gonna drive like a freakin' maniac, he ought not to have a sign on his bumper that says, “Call my boss if I run you off the road.” So there I am, driving 85 miles an hour with my cell phone stuck to my ear trying to read the number on the back of his truck, and at some point the guy realizes what I’m doing. He tries to speed up, dodge me in traffic, but I’m not havin’ any of it. I GOT HIS NUMBER. Oh, yeah, baby, I did.

“I’ll report this to the driver’s supervisor right away, ma’am.”

Heh heh heh.

Boy, that felt good. So good, in fact, that as I passed him on the two lane highway, I even resisted the urge to give him the one fingered salute. Just waved and smiled a lot, knowing a three day suspension without pay would be waiting for him when he got home.

That’ll teach him to mess with evil minded Californians who know how to seek revenge.

Heh heh heh.

TJB

On being a good parent

I was a good mom yesterday.

Most days, I go to bed disappointed in myself in that department. My poor kids have put up with so much: my inattentiveness, my impatience with them, my need for proper order. Though they are still in elementary school, I expect so much from them. When a caring relative told me once, “They’re just little boys,” my response was, “I’m not raising boys, I’m raising men.”

It’s true, too. I expect a lot from them: I want them to learn right from wrong, to have a strong value system, to cherish friendship, to turn away from deceit, and to be kind to others when it is in their power to do so. That’s a big load for a little kid. But, I’m raising men, not boys, and to my mind, a successful man does all that. I don’t care whether they turn out to be janitors or generals, but I do care about their character.

So, anyway, must days, as I said, I go to bed thinking, “I was too impatient. They’re just children, give them a break.” In fact, God convicted me of this recently, to the extent that I was forced on my knees to ask His forgiveness for not treasuring the gift that he gave me. I also know my impatience is hard to control, and comes out of my mouth when I don’t. I asked God to teach me the patience with my kids that He has with me.

He heard me. Somehow, in the last few days, he’s given me the supernatural ability to cut my kids some slack. They seem calmer now, happier, more affectionate, and I know that isn’t coming just from my abilities. I’m just as annoyed when they mess up, or do something to deliberately irritate me, but I think first before I open my mouth, and that’s the blessing He’s given me. Somewhere, from the depths of my soul, comes the words, “They’re only little boys.”

So, when one of my boys suffered an emotional setback yesterday, God’s hand touched us both. My heart went out to my son, and I asked myself, “What can I do that won’t make this worse?”

I took my son on my knee, listened to his troubles and his despair, and sympathized with him. I ignored the mountains of work on my desk that weren’t going to get done that evening (although they desperately needed to be), and the dinner that wasn’t going to get cooked (we didn't eat until 8pm), and I figured out a way to help my child. For over an hour, we sat and talked and developed a strategy to solve his problem. I valued his fears, and validated his strengths. At the end, I played a game with him, and he was smiling. Smiling!

My husband, who had been sitting nearby and apparently listening, afterwards came up to me and hugged and kissed me, telling me I had done a good job. I didn’t even feel I could take the credit. God gets the credit for that one, and I only hope He’ll give me the wisdom to do it next time. Only maybe not when I’ve got so much work to do on my desk...?

:-)

TJB

A plague of locusts

Recently, my family has been experiencing a run of bad luck that hearkens back to Biblical days. Over Spring Break, we had a sewer line rupture in our new house (leading to a repair bill of $4000), my car break down ($1000), and a swarm of bees lodge in our attic ($78). Our dog has allergies and ear infections, to the tune of $700 in the past two months for special food, vet visits, and medicine. This past week we had a maddened opossum from the forest tear a hole in our deck screen. We had to get a trapper to come and catch him and take him away from where he’d been living under the house ($130). With no income this summer (we’re teachers), we’ve been sweating how we will make ends meet since a good chunk of our savings had just been wiped out. We did some schedule juggling, and though we’d hoped to spend the summer with our children and taking a break from our intense workload, we will instead be alternating summer session employment. The upside is it helps us a little financially; the down side is at no one time during the summer will all of us be in the house, so all scheduled vacation plans (family reunions, etc) had to be cancelled. Add to this the need to have the enormous tree branch hanging over our roof pruned before hurricane season, as well as the fact that we’d intended to have the windows fitted for plywood in preparation of same, and we’re seriously wondering how we will make it.

The joke has been that we’re waiting for the plague of locusts to come next.

Well, be careful what you joke about...

Today, a swarm of something suspiciously like termites attacked our house. They were streaming in the windows, near as we can figure, entering both bathrooms en masse and in the living room. We’d had our regular bi-monthly visit from our exterminator recently, so many of the insects appeared to be dead already...but many were not. We have to wait until tomorrow for the exterminator to come back and help determine for us if these were just some oddly shaped ants, or if we are looking at another expensive bill.

All this is by way of saying: be careful what you wish for. We’ve wanted our own home for years, feeling depressed that we weren’t able to provide this basic ritual of life for our kids. We got our chance when we moved from Los Angeles to a much more affordable area. We were ecstatic (if surprised) when we qualified, since we are just able to afford the monthly mortgage. However, what we didn’t realize was the unexpected expenses of owning one’s own home. While I still love my home, I begin to wonder how many of my other long held dreams might turn out to be a disaster waiting to happen. How many other things I’ve idealized as, “If I could only have X, I’d be happy.”

God is the only one who knows what will make us happy, and I’m beginning to realize that if we don’t have it yet, there must be a darn good reason why.

Another lesson learned the hard way.

TJB

Writing Isn't for Sissies

Writing isn't for sissies.

That's what a good friend tells me I once said in one of my "inspirational tirades," and I believe her, though I have no memory of the event. I do know I have a habit of attacking like a pit bull when one of my writing buddies says, "I'm a horrible writer!" or "I should just give up on this writing thing!" or some variation thereof. I will latch on to their pant leg, metaphorically speaking, and not let go until they admit that writing is hard work, self-validation is often the only kind we get, and whoever quits first, loses. I often lose consciousness during these tirades, and only come to after the person weepily thanks me for bucking up their spirits. Then, of course, I slink away and wonder if I'm a horrible writer and maybe I should just think about giving all this up.

Yes, it is true. I am in one of my "depressed" periods. Monet had his "blue" period (I think), and I've got my "depressed" periods. Now, I'm not talking depressed in the clinical sense in which normal, non-writing people occasionally endure. No, I'm creatively depressed in the "my gosh, how much longer will this take, and can I hold out until it does?" sense. I realized recently that the five year goal that I had set myself when I first embarked on this "three-hour tour" had been met and passed this January. In Jan 2001, I set a goal that I wanted to be a "working" writer, earning a modest living from my books in five years. How naive was that?

Okay, so, now what? Do I give it up now that I haven't met my goal? Do I devote the time I spend typing at the computer, talking to people who don't exist and making up stories that are important, but not real, to my children? To my husband? My students? All of whom have been mostly patient, unless they want something at the same time I need to write?

Part of why I wanted to publish was, yes, to tell my stories, to entertain. It also had to do with leaving my mark, being something other than a wife, mommy, employee. Those are all important things, don't get me wrong. But as Margaret Atwood says in her poem, "Spelling,"

A child is not a poem,
a poem is not a child
There is no either/or.
However.

In other words, having either is not a substitute for the other. A child can't fulfill the need I have to "mainline words," as Atwood says in another part of her poem. Nor does writing fulfill my need to be a good mother, wife, and teacher. All which leaves me feeling chronically guilty for not doing any of them well, and yet I can't seem to stop.

When I started this, I let my kids see me struggle, strive, fail, pick myself up, and start again and again. "Mommy's working," I would say, even though I didn't have the paycheck to prove it. I wanted to teach my kids to strive for something hard, something worthwhile that is worth having. I wanted to teach them not to settle, not to give up if what they wanted didn't come easily, if their dreams were too big to fit into other people's perceptions of "should."

They were babies when I started, and now they are old enough to ask with a sigh, "Mommy, when are you ever going to get published?" They know Mommy is a writer, but one who teaches to earn a living. They know not to talk about Mommy's writing outside the home, because, you know, she writes romance, and not everyone will understand. They know writing is hard work, and they've even taken to pecking out their own stories at their own computer, tossing around ideas and searching for just the right words to tell their tale.

Am I teaching them an addiction from which they won't be able to quit? Am I setting them up for failure by pursuing a dream they might never be able to catch? Should I say, "Well, writing well is important, but make sure you get a good degree, so you can earn a living and take care of your family if your writing doesn't take off"?

I don't know. Jennie Crusie said something recently about writers having to choose between relationships and careers (can't be more specific about that, because then the loop police where I saw this posted would have to kill me), and it struck me as truth. To be successful, do I really have to choose?

A child is not a poem,
a poem is not a child
There is no either/or.
However.

TJB

Another defection from Graybill and English

Word up: Graybill and English has lost another agent. Coming on the heels of the recent departure by Jeff Kleinman to start Folio Literary Agency with Paige Wheeler, et al, comes word that Literary agent, Elaine English, has left the agency as well. Like Jeff, she has set up her own company. She can now be reached at Elaine English Literary, 4710 41st Street, NW, Suite D, Washington, DC 20016. Telephone: (202) 362-5190.

TJB

Character development

"The good have flaws, and the bad have reasons." ~ Bonnie Hearn Hill


This is another writing lesson I’m learning. Characters that are perfectly good--who have no flaws--are boring, or even worse, annoying. Remember that perfect girl in high school with the perfect skin, perfect figure, and perfect grades? Hated her. Bet you did, too. Now, give that girl a zit on the end of her nose on the most important night of her life--prom night--and make her worry that the boy she’s dating really loves another girl and only asked her out because she said no, and you’ve made that perfect girl more vulnerable. Give her a backstory in which she always tried to be perfect because her father was both demanding and exacting, and for whom a 4.0 grade point average was considered merely “acceptable,” and you’ve made her poignant. Add in the fact that she struggled with anorexia in her teen years, but conquered it and helps others to do the same, and you’ve made her courageous.

A perfectly evil character is just as boring. In my current work-in-progress, I resisted making my villain--a “healer” gone bad--a true evil guy. Something in me understood him, even though he is a murderer. He has a reason for the choices he has made, reasons rooted deep in his psyche, and he genuinely believes he is the hero of his own story. He has noble qualities, the ability to make great sacrifices, and, unfortunately, very poor judgment. He might have been the hero of this story, but he had a desire to do good in the absence of the will of his God. This leads to great evil, in which, while trying to search for a universal cure for disease, he falls under the belief that the end justifies the means, and innocent people die as a result. My goal is to make this character so sympathetic, yet so wrong in his choices, that the reader aches for the lost potential of his life. Sort of like how Darth Vader’s backstory makes you realize how much lost potential there was as a result of Anakin’s choices.

In actuality, it is a character’s own traits which move the plot forward: his or her choices force action to occur, and then the character must react to that, driving the plot along. So remember, as trees don’t appear on the landscape fully grown, neither do your characters. Ask yourself, what formed him or her? That backstory may never make it into your final story, but knowing it will make all the difference.

TJB

More stuff I've learned

Okay, so I've been spending a lot of time in writing classes, going back to basics. Well, not really basics, actually. I'm taking on-line classes and going to RWA meetings with speakers who are advanced way beyond the basics, multipublished authors, who are passing some of their tricks and tips on.

A recent one from a speaker at the local RWA chapter near where I live was Lori Wilde. She offered the best tip I've heard in a while. In her books, she chooses some sort of prop for the characters in her scene that will represent the emotion or theme she's trying to express. That way, it keeps her away from "telling" the story and moves her towards "showing" the story.

An example would be in the Susan Elizabeth Phillips book Ain't She Sweet, the day Sugar Beth learned that her father was never going to love her the way she wanted him to, which winds up shaping her behavior for the rest of her life. Her father has always treated her like a dumb blonde, so she believes if she works hard enough, and gets all A's on her report card, he'll love her more. On the day she gets her report card (the prop), she bicycles over to show her daddy. She's bursting with pride, clutching the report card in her hand--until she sees her daddy sitting with another little girl in his lap, giving her the love and attention Sugar Beth has always wanted. That little girl is his second family, the one he really loves. Sugar Beth realizes she'll never be smart enough to get him to love her that way, and she crumples up the report card, and in her anguish, it drops to the ground, forgotten. We, the readers, realize along with her what that moment will mean in her life, and it's all represented by that dirty, forgotten, abandoned report card--a hope, a dream, trampled in the dirt.

I thought that was powerful, and I've made use of it as much as possible in my WIP. My hero, an alien cop, wears gloves most of the time. It represents his loneliness and isolation, and the way he surpresses his emotions. When the gloves come off--literally--his emotions are explosive and very near the surface. When he pulls them back on, he's under control again. It's a very effective way for communicating the hero's emotional state to the reader without saying, "He was upset."

Good tool, huh? Try it in your writing and see if it works.

TJB