The parts that people skip*

Description Difficulties

I’ve found a new author. Well, new to me.

I’ve always read a lot, but I went through a lengthy period where I rarely read anything new. Life was so busy and hectic that I wanted to know, when I sat down with a book, that I was going to enjoy it. I tended to re-read old favorites.

Now that I have moved and my days are less about just getting through them and more about enjoying them, I have been able to branch out. And I’ve come across Ruth Rendell.

The Baroness (I love how the English reward artists as well as CEOs) is a well-known (although not to me, apparently) and much honored author of murder mysteries. Is there anyone who doesn’t enjoy a good English murder mystery? A cup of tea, a body in the library, a good old-fashioned butler looking down his nose at the man from the Yard (Scotland, that is) while Miss Marple or her equivalent saves the day.

I like a book with a clear point. It doesn’t get much clearer than a murder mystery. Once you know whodunit, you are done.

The thing, however, that I really want to say about Ruth Rendell is how masterful her descriptions are. I feel that this is an area where my own writing falls short. (Basically, I suck at description.) I don’t know why this is, although it is possible that in my early reading years, the descriptions were the parts I skimmed. I remember skipping whole pages of Ivanhoe, for example. It’s possible that I never really absorbed descriptive technique due to lack of paying attention.

It’s also possible that I am more of a verbal than a visual person, although I can conjure up mental pictures of people and places with ease. There is some major disconnect, though, in my brain when it comes to putting words to the mental pictures. I would be a total failure at that exercise I’m told happens early in police training–where someone with a gun bursts into the classroom, holds up the teacher and then flees, and the recruits are asked to describe the perpetrator.

The recruits, however, are taught to be more observant and probably given tips and tricks for estimating heights and weights. They improve. I probably can, too.

Of course, rookie police officers’ descriptions, of necessity, tend to favor clarity over the evocation of personality or a mood. That evocation is that at which Ruth Rendell excels. I think I’m going to have to study her writing a little more.

She’s written dozens of books, as both herself and under the name Barbara Vine.

How nice for me!

* I try to leave out the parts that people skip. — Elmore Leonard

Mad dogs and Englishmen

And Floridians…

Go out in the midday sun.

But we’ve turned the corner on the weather, I think, and I am so thankful. A couple of days of 85° temperatures and only 52% humidity.

Note that “only.”

It’s astonishing how relative everything is.

There was a time when 52% humidity would seem awfully high. (I went to grad school in Denver, for one thing.) The average relative humidity around here, however, is 89%. And it rained for all of August. All of August! ALL. So, 52% is a good number. We like it.

All of a sudden, it is rather pleasant to do yard work. Mowing, edging, pruning. I am Gertie the Gardener this week. Even a mosquito bite seems more bearable when it doesn’t feel like the insect had to swim through the air to get you.

The thing is, however, that it’s a little hard to adjust to this different weather pattern. In the old days (two years ago), this would be the time of year when I would be launching new writing projects, starting new classes, attending first-meetings-of-the-year for a bunch of organizations to which I belonged. It would be the time to start putting away outdoor toys and accessories.

Down here, however, I am learning that this is the time to start thinking about your outdoor projects. Now is when the ligustrum needs to be pruned and anything I want to transplant needs to be dug up and moved (and, knowing me, likely killed–but that’s a different post).

This is the time to think about cleaning out the garage, tidying up the dock. It’s the time to think about repairing the driveway. (I don’t know anything about concrete, though, so thinking is as far as that will get for now.)

It’s time to get serious about weeding the flower beds, and it’s probably time to figure out how the lid to the dryer vent comes off and clean out any lint.

Trouble is, of course, that it is still time to be launching new writing projects and whatever else comes with a new year.

Because this is the new year, really.

That thing in January–that’s just a Hallmark holiday.

Writing up “that ravell’d sleeve”

The Scottish Play.

Yikes. I’ve quoted from the Scottish Play.

I’m not sure, but I think I’m okay, since I didn’t say it out loud. I’m going to take the chance, anyway. Especially since the headline and quote are such a stretch to get me to what I want to talk about: why writing makes me sleepy?

That’s what I’m wondering this Wednesday. Writing makes me sleepy, and I don’t understand it. You could be charitable and say it’s because it’s really hard work, but I don’t think that’s it. Because, the thing is, it’s the same kind of sleepy that I get doing a crossword puzzle–and that’s just recreation.

Does this happen to any of you? I write for a while, and regardless of how well it’s going, I start to feel like I want a nap. My eyelids get heavy. My brain gets fuzzy. I want to lie down. ( guess it doesn’t happen when it’s going really well. When it’s going really well, you feel like God on maybe the fifth day. You just want to keep going–whether you ought to do so or not. (I think this explains giraffes.) Under ordinary circumstances, however, writing makes me very sleepy.

I have no scientific proof of this, but I’m wondering if the sleep centers in the brain aren’t near the portions that govern language. Does stimulating the one stimulate the other? Or is it the other way around? Are they so far apart that sending all the electrical activity to one area deprives the other of some much needed stimuli? I guess that would only work if we were talking about the language center and the keep-awake center. Is there such a thing?

You see what a successful “wondering” this is? That’s because I have absolutely no basis for forming an opinion. I can theorize in a complete absence of all data. This is otherwise known as guessing. Or “blowing smoke.”

What do you think causes this phenomenon?

Well, you think about it for a while.

I’m going to go take a nap.

Bad to the bone

Try to be, anyway.

This is a tip about getting past that streak of perfectionism that is keeping you from achieving your goals.

Somewhere along the line, most of us got the idea that doing something badly was–well–a bad thing. Maybe we missed a fly ball on the softball field in second grade, and the next time teams were chosen, we were one of the last players picked. Maybe it started earlier–like when we got yelled at for spilling our milk.

Mistake = bad. Dangerous, even.

In the interests of survival, we started to be careful. We started to try really hard to do things “right.” Over time, that can be paralyzing.

But, there is an easy way around it. Just decide to do it–whatever “it” is–wrong. Announce that intention, if necessary. After all, how can someone blame you for not getting it “right” if you’ve already told them you are intentionally doing it wrong?

If that sounds crazy, let me tell you a story about the first play I ever wrote.

The first draft was promising enough that Abingdon Theatre Company was willing to give it a public reading. Jan Buttram, the artistic director, being an experienced playwright and a wise woman, suggested we should have a private reading first. “If you hear it for the first time in front of an audience, you’re not going to be able to hear it,” she said.

So, we had the private reading, and I got some very valuable feedback. I went off, with great enthusiasm, to do a re-write. And promptly froze. Oh, no! What if I ruin it? I wasn’t sure how I’d come to write it in the first place. It seemed to me there was a good chance that, in re-writing it, I would lose whatever had made that first draft halfway good.

I was so stuck that I went back to Jan some weeks later and announced that we would have to cancel the reading. In a further demonstration of wisdom, she said, “No, we’re not going to cancel. We can always read the version you have now. Meanwhile, why don’t you go back and try again? If you don’t get anywhere, don’t worry.”

I sighed and groaned and gnashed my teeth–and I went home to try again. When I got there, I remembered “We an always read the version you have now,” and I promptly saved the file under a new name. Then, I said to myself, “Okay. You’ve got the original saved. Now, you’re going into this version, and you’re going to ruin it.”

The re-write began to flow. We read the new version, and that is the version that launched my great playwriting adventure. Once I gave myself permission to do it badly, I did just fine.

Try it.

There’s always something.

New and good.

It’s a Monday. And you know what that means, right? A post concerning a Monday Miracle.

The trouble is, I have not been able to think of a miracle about which to write. So, I had this thought: Maybe Monday Miracles could alternate with Monday Moans.

Plenty of material there, right?

Then I saw a butterfly flutter by right outside my upstairs window. It flitted in and out of the branches of my neighbor’s oak tree which overhangs my property–by a lot!

I thought, There’s a miracle.

The truth is twice a year we get quite a number of butterflies. I’m not really up on butterfly habits, but I know that some species of them migrate at least once a year. I don’t know if they live long enoug to head back, or what. But we get a lot of butterflies, and they’re pretty, and it’s fun.

So there’s that.

And the oak tree is another miracle. The Southern Live Oak is a beautiful tree.

There are lots of miracles all around. It’s just that they’re here all the time. And they seem sort of small and mundane. Everybody likes butterflies, don’t they?

The truth, however, is that most of the “moans” I can come up with are fairly small and mundane also. A hundred years from now will it really matter that I haven’t yet figured out what to do about the fogged window glass?

So, my question is: Why is it easier to come up with the bad things? The petty, pesky annoying things? Rather than the good things?

Some quirk in the human brain–or, perhaps, only in how we’ve been conditioned by our society makes many of us focus on the hardships and challenges more than the joys and achievements.

I once participated in a program that started every meeting with “What’s new and good?” and ended with “What are you looking forward to?” because we do focus so often on the negative. Not a bad plan. Not a bad plan at all.

What’s new and good right now is the fact that I’ve remembered this.

And the butterflies.

The Fountain of Youth

It is here in Florida.

They say that you keep yourself young by continuing to learn new things.

I say there’s probably a lot of truth to that.

I also say does it have to be boring things? Scary things? As we get older, suddenly we need to learn about a host of medical issues–bone loss, prostate troubles, hearing aids and more stuff to do with our teeth than the actual number of teeth we probably still have!

Fortunately, I’m still young enough that the worst is yet to come. On the other hand, my husband is a good bit older than I, and I’ve moved a lot closer to my mom.

What actually started me thinking about this post wasn’t the delights of aging. It was thinking about all the new things I’ve had to learn since we bought Casa Lagarto, and the one new thing on the horizon.

I have a well, now. An aerator. Security lights and alarm systems. A septic tank and a drain field. A gas fireplace. One enormous exhaust fan in the garage. A hot water heater, a central vacuum and an air handler.

I didn’t have all of that when I lived in an apartment. And the one thing I did have that made whatever else I had incidental was a super. Yay, Santos! I miss him.

My latest area of investigation–having done the whole air conditioner, fireplace, boat lift thing–is drainage. Because it rained so much in August (30 out of 31 days) and it came down so fast sometimes that the ground could not absorb it. I watched small boggy places grow into puddles and then grow into pools where goldfish could have swum. And then I watched them come up over the concrete slab of the front porch and head for the front door.

My neighbor said, “Did they tell you? If we have a hurricane, you will have water coming in your front door.”

Great.

To be honest, I am doubtful that it will come in the front door. We’ve just had more rain than we’ve had in a hundred years, I’m told. I’m not sure, however, how that is any insurance that we won’t have more at some point. Like the investing prospectuses all say: “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”

So, I’m looking for solutions to–I don’t know–re-contour the ground? Re-route the water? Gutters, maybe, would be a good first step. There’s a thing that looks like a horizontal set of Venetian blinds that might work. (If I could remember what it’s called long enough to Google it.) I’ve already bought a thing called a Hydrabarrier which looks like it might be quite effective.

Meanwhile, anybody know anything about French drains?

Yes, but–

Red Flag / White Flag

One of the keys to getting what you want is knowing what you want.

Here’s an inconvenient truth.

To some extent, what you want is what you have.

Human beings have incredible strength and determination. Through the ages, many of us, most of us, have picked ourselves up from less than ideal circumstances and improved our lot. All of us can do that.

And now, I hear the collective response coming.

Yes, but. . .

Yes, but I don’t have the money to start my own business, buy a house, go to college.

Yes, but my parents won’t let me, my teachers don’t think I can, my boyfriend will leave.

Yes, but I’m just not good enough, I don’t know how, I’m too old, too young, too white, too black.

The most polite response to all that is “Hogwash!”

There are, very rarely, a set of circumstances that truly prevent you from doing some things. There are what they call “Acts of God” that visit death and destruction randomly and unfairly on people.

In almost every other case, people are capable of the most extraordinary things.

“Whenever you think something can’t be done, look at Helen Keller.” *

So many people achieve so much by hard work and persistence.

If you’ve hit a roadblock and you’re talking to friends, relatives, colleagues–your support system–about it, chances are those people will begin to offer suggestions on how to overcome the obstacle. If you hear yourself saying,” Yes, but…” to those suggestions, maybe you need to ask yourself, “Do I really want to do this? Or would I rather watch that TV show, take that nap, eat these cookies.”

It all really comes down to this: What do you want most? The “Yes, but–” can be a legitimate way to think through the issue, explore the possibilities in any suggestion. It can also be an indicator that you aren’t yet ready to do what it takes to get what you want.

Unless what comes after the “Yes, but–” is the phrase “it’s illegal” or “somebody could get seriously injured,” the “Yes, but–” is a red flag of danger.

Don’t let it be a white flag of surrender.

* Mr. Self Development

90 days!

90 days, 90 days, 90 days!

It has been exactly 90 days since I started this blog. And this is the 90th blog entry. (Actually, it’s the 91st, since there was one day where I posted a quote from Jordan Roth as a second entry.) The point, however, is that there has been at least one blog entry every day for the last 90 days. If you think that’s easy, you have never tried daily blogging.

So, pardon me, while I take this opportunity to celebrate!

Do you think I should have cake? I think I should have cake.

The only problem with that is that it would require me to bake a cake. And then, because my husband doesn’t really like cake (can you imagine?!), it would require me to eat the cake. The whole cake.

I’m thinking that would not be a good idea, since in addition to setting myself the goal of daily blogging, I have set myself a goal of losing a little weight. But, oh! Cake!

Never mind. Virtue is its own reward. (If you believe that, we should discuss the purchase price of that bridge in Brooklyn.)

So…no cake.

There is, however, one reward: a built-in topic for today’s post. Yee-ha!

90 days, 90 days, 90 days!

If I can manage another 90, I will have 180 days. Nearly half a year.

I think it can be done, but it’s surely not the sinecure I thought it would be when I walked blithely and blindly into this. If I had looked up the word “sinecure” in advance, I would definitely not have thought it was the proper term. “Sinecure” means a job both easy and providing a salary. However easy I thought blogging might be, I was well aware there was no salary involved.

That’s not to say there haven’t been compensations. I’ve enjoyed hearing from my subscribers. I’ve enjoyed knowing I have subscribers. And now I get to enjoy a sense of achievement. Because…

90 days, 90 days, 90 days!

(Maybe I will have cake.)

No mercy?

“Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.”

That is a quote from the ever-brilliant Joseph Campbell. It is both funny and true, as the best quotes are.

However, it’s Thankful Thursday, and while I realize most of you will think we’ve gone past this point by this time, I am going to talk about how thankful I am for computers.

I love computers. I know, I know. Two of the most dreaded words in the English language are “computer error.” Almost as bad: when the phone rep says, “the computer is down.” We hate the computerized phone menus that seem to be malevolently blocking us from talking to a human being. We are annoyed when the people we are with keep checking their smartphones instead of giving their undivided attention to our scintillating conversation. We can’t understand how we come to waste so much time on Facebook.

But, oh! The hours of entertainment. The increase in productivity. In my case, the leap from temporary secretary at $15-$20 per hour to computer programmer and over a hundred. Even more important, I sometimes think, was the antidote to powerlessness.

There is no one who has less power than a would-be actor. Almost all other artists can practice their craft in the absence of recognition. If you are a writer, all you need is a pencil and a scrap of paper. If you are a visual artist, you can draw anywhere. A singer may sing in the shower. If you play an instrument, you can play it any time (taking into account consideration for neighbors, of course).

The actor, whose instrument is herself, cannot do much without other actors.

It is the only craft I know where you need permission to practice it. And another hundred people just got off of the train.* The competition for that permission is fierce. Opportunities can be few and frustratingly long in coming. It’s easy to feel discouraged and incompetent and without power.

But. . .you can sit down at a computer, and if you know the right keys to press, you can make it do anything.

I love computers.

* Stephen Sondheim, Company, “Another Hundred People”

Where have all the whip-poor-wills gone?

Long time passing.

Can’t you just hear that sung to a Pete Seeger tune by Peter, Paul & Mary?

All kidding aside, though, where have the whip-poor-wills gone? When I was a kid, they were one of the few birds I could recognize by their call. The other being a bob-white.

For me to recognize them, they must have been pretty prevalent. Now, I never hear a whip-poor-will or a bob-white.

A little research shows that they are indeed in decline, and no one is quite sure why. Destruction of habitat due to building, pesticides that kill their food source, and global warming are the most common reasons cited for the dwindling numbers.

My uncle has another theory, although I’m not sure it holds good for areas farther afield than Florida. He thinks the egrets eat the whip-poor-wills’ eggs. Whip-poor-wills, and for that matter, bob-whites nest on the ground. And egrets have been known to prey on the eggs of sea birds–so I guess it’s possible. I suspect it is also true that the egrets are a more efficient competition for the same food.

They do seem to be efficient. They have very few predators, and as long as humans raise cattle, their habitat will survive. They do okay. First bred in Florida in 1953, they had spread to Canada by 1962 and California by the mid-sixties. A successful species.

So, I don’t know. A bunch of egrets following a herd of cattle is a pretty sight, but I do miss the whip-poor-will’s song.

Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants