Blogetary (Weblog + Commentary = Blogetary)

In the series Firefly, there’s an episode where a piece of the engine breaks and it can’t be fixed. And if that piece of engine doesn’t work, then the rest of the engine doesn’t work either. It can’t be fixed. If it’s broken, it needs to be replaced and that’s all there is to it.

This evening, our apartment manager was spending time trying to fix my kitchen sink. It’s been clogged a few days. I live in an old building and the plumbing, though not as old as the building, is still fairly old. I had hoped the clog was simple and something I could fix say with Alka Seltzer, or storebrand Liquid Plumber, or even real brand Liquid Plumber. Nothing doing.

So, here I was now holding a flashlight and fetching buckets and towels for our very busy apartment manager hoping he could fix my clogged sink so I could get back to my regularly scheduled life. And of course, it didn’t work. After snaking the drain a good long time, only bits and pieces came out, and they were coming out all over him and the floor and the bits around there. Taking apart the U bend below the sink showed a pipe that was rotting and badly in need of replacing. Eventually, he put everything back together in as close a resemblance to what it had been as possible and said not to use the sink. The pipe needed to be the replaced and a real plumber needed to be called in for the clog. The drain wasn’t going to be fixed tonight.

It made me think. Sometimes things just can’t be fixed.

Maybe a beloved relative or friend dies, or a relationship or friendship totally dissolves or blows up in your face. Maybe a favorite object is lost, broken, or stolen. Or you miss the bus, the train, the plane, your ride. Maybe you contract a disease or life-threatening illness or life-changing condition. Maybe you made a wrong decision somewhere along the line or said the wrong thing or did the wrong thing and now there’s no going back. It’s done. A hurricane or tornado or earthquake plows through your life and that’s that. Time machines don’t work in real life. Some things can’t be fixed. They just are. They just suck. And that’s all there is to it.

You have to figure out how to deal with it (or choose to not deal with it) and just move on. You might be able to rectify something, but chances are you won’t be able to and you’ll just have to live with it as best you can and hope that your future decisions don’t suck as much as your past ones do.

One quarter, while in college, I was taking some 400 level English Literature courses as well as some 300 level Education classes. Education classes suck. Unless they’re actually getting you to use specific techniques in front of a class, they’re pretty worthless and really boring. It’s all theory that may or may not work. This particular quarter I was taking a beginning theory class. We’d sit and listen to our prof (his name was Sy Schwartz. I remember that much) go on about how much he enjoyed teaching and what he did for specific occurrences. It was interesting to listen to his stories, but pretty boring over all. I could feel my brain turn off in that class. At the end of the quarter we had a take home final. Buy a blue book, use the text and class lectures, and answer the questions.

Meanwhile, in the next building over, I was taking a class that explored the poetry of Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson. Two of my favorite poets to this day. I loved coming to this class. I felt like it was way over my head at the time, but I still loved it. At the end of this class, I was supposed to turn in a paper on a research topic that I had gotten approval on from the professor. I did my specific paper on the oratory marks on the poetry of Emily Dickinson and what they might mean. The paper had to be turned in about an hour or two before the take home final had to be turned in.
Typical of me, both at the time and now, I procrastinated so that when it came down to what needed to be done, I had put all my energy into the Dickinson paper and nothing into the Ed take home final. But I’d been to the Ed class everyday and when I sat down and looked at the questions, I realized I knew all the answers without really looking them up and did it in a total of like 30 minutes I think. I turned in the paper and the take home final shortly thereafter.

Got an A or A- on the Dickinson paper and a B or B+ on the Ed paper. I felt pretty good about that. Then my Ed professor pulled me into his office and lectured me on how he thought it was obvious that I had done a slapdash job on the final and I could have done a better job and received an A. Well, being polite and insecure I didn’t have the gaul to say, “but I was having fun doing the paper on my real major and your class sucks.” So instead, I shrugged, and old Sy proceeded to lecture me on being “too cavalier.” I remember thinking, “cavalier? I just spent three weeks putting together a paper on Emily Dickinson, how is that cavalier? Why is it cavalier that most of Ed theory is just common sense?” But I didn’t say anything, except to laugh with friends about it later, because there was nothing to do about it. It was done. No going back. No fixing it.

When I gave the veterinarian permission to put Kiko to sleep and I was watching I wanted to say, “No. Stop. I take that back. I want to take that back.” But there was no fixing it. There was no fixing Kiko. He was too sick and too much in pain. That was that.

There’s a girl I was on the track team with in junior high. We were both shot putters. I accidentally hit her in the head with a shot put during practice. To this day I feel bad, wondering if she’ll suffer some kind of damage because of my mistake. I’ll never know and I can’t do anything about it. It can’t be fixed.

Our parents mostly try to do their best to teach us how to make good decisions just as their parents taught them so that we can grow to adulthood understanding the importance of making good decisions. Sometimes we’re capable of that and sometimes we aren’t. But, for the most part, once those decisions are made, that’s it. Once the money is spent, or the time is wasted or the words are out in the air or on the page, it’s gone. That’s it. There is no going back.

I had a friend who hurt me badly one times too many. I hurt so much I made bad decisions, repeatedly, on how to communicate that hurt back at him. I wanted him to hurt as badly as I did, or even worse. Now that friendship is irreparably damaged. The most I can do is move on, because nothing I say or do will ever fix it. That might look cavalier, as it did to ol’ Sy, but that’s just the way things are. The best I can do is hope to make better decisions if the same situation turns up with other friends.

In story telling, every bit of a story serves a purpose. If there is an irreparably damaged relationship it either feeds the villain’s needs or it may make the hero shine more for trying to redeem him or herself. If the luggage is lost, the plate is broken, or the heirloom jewelry is stolen, then the writer can bring all that full circle so there is a purpose to it all. The crime is solved. The damage is symbolic and a learning tool for the protagonist. Better clothes turn up in different luggage that fit even better than those lost.

It’s tempting to try to put that fictional framework over our real life lives. We want Hogwarts or Charmed or Miss Marple or Gandalf to be real. We want the tragedies in our lives, the lost friends and loved ones, the losses from disasters like Katrina or the earthquake in Peru or the tsunami in Malaysia to mean something.

As much as you’d like it to all mean something, though, the best you can do is take it and learn from it. Move on. And hope you don’t suck as badly at this as other people do.

As I get older I come to realize more and more how trapped we all are inside our own heads. On Darkover (a world from a Marion Zimmer Bradley series), people are regularly born with telepathic abilities. In all sorts of stories, telepathic links are discovered between say the protagonist and their loved one or between a vampire and his or her sire or between family groups. But in real life, it’s not at all common. And the people who really do have the telepathic connections do their best to block those out most of the time.

Which means that most of us are stuck mostly in our heads most of the time, and unless we express ourselves verbally, or via the written word, or betray ourselves with body language, no one will ever really know what’s going on inside our heads.  This is one of the reasons that our perception of ourselves will always vary somewhat from the perceptions that our friends, family, enemies, etc have of us.
Case in point – fashion obsessions.  Six months ago, say, in March, you could have been obsessing over finding the perfect vintage tapestry heel that would match the sun dress you’d found in a vintage shop.  It was going to be your spring and summer garden party outfit.  At first you didn’t talk about it, just looked on the internet, paged through magazines, and looked everytime you ducked into a store that contained shoes, even if it happened to be Lady Footlocker.  After a while, your friends begin to notice you’re on a quest and help you a bit, laugh at you a bit and then settle on you this new tag of “obsessed with those tapestry pumps.”

Meanwhile, you may or may not still occasionally look for those pumps, but you’ve moved on. You ended up wearing the taupe sandals anyway. It is now August. You’ve decided you need to find the perfect pair of jeans to wear for autumn and winter and you’d rather spend time in ballet flats because you’re tired of keeping up your pedicure. But, again, you haven’t said anything. You’re just going through life, paging through magazines, looking through websites, ducking into stores whenever you see a sale sign. And while you’re friends think they’re helping you find that tapestry heel, you’re now looking for the perfect animal print ballet flat with the perfect fit midrise jean. And when it finally comes out, it may feel to them that you’ve changed the rules on them, but really, you just moved on, changed obsessions.  And it will take a while for your friends’ perceptions of you to change and keep up with that.

It’s your own little you-centric world because where else can you be but in your own head? I mean, we go to school in part to learn about the world, but also to be somewhat socialized, taught to interact in it and with other people. Parents or teachers try to get us to see the world from other points of view so that we aren’t so me-centric, but in the end, it’s what we fall back on. It’s what we know.  Your friends who are helping you shoe shop could themselves be obsessing over the perfect belt or top, but since they’re expending energy helping you, you just assume they’re just as obsessed with shoes as you are, unless they let you know differently or you pull out of yourself enough to notice that everytime you’re looking for pumps, they’re looking at belts.

Shoes, belts, tops, jeans, are all just examples though.  A friend asks how you’re doing and you reply with “Fine, same old, same old,” because to you there doesn’t seem to be anything new to report. You haven’t, say, seen any new movies, met anyone new, or gotten a new job.  But inside you’re seething.  How is rent going to be paid? When can you take the dog to the vet? Will you need to move closer to your parents to take care of them?  What should you do with your main character in the second act of the play you’re writing? Should you try to put the window screen in yourself or ask for help and if you ask for help, who do you ask and what kind of favor will you owe them? And is it really the end of the world as you know it or will you be fine?

And that is not “the same old, same old.” That is a very active life. But that’s not what you share, so as far as your friends know, you’re still obsessed with those tapestry heels. And since they have been very intertwined in their own obsessions, for all you know, they’re still obsessed with finding a nice pair of summer sandals as well.  So you’re perception of them and their perception of you is nothing like how you perceive yourselves.

So, what they think they say to you may not actually be what you think you hear them say.

And we all sink back into our self-centric lives and obsessions, bumbling about blindly with one another.

Like a one-two punch; one by mail and one by email.  Sometimes you just wanna grab these people by the lapels and say, “Just what the bleep do you people want anyway?!?”

One of the enjoyments I get out of being a writer is getting to know other writers; how they function, what they write, how their brains work or don’t work. That damned elusive thing called creativity, the live Muse that spurs them on despite the procrastinations or other interruptions in daily life. I enjoy that about being a writer and getting to know other writers. Mike Robinson is one of those writers. Recently, in an effort to get his work out there and read (and to bypass the editors of magazines and periodicals who just don’t “get” him), he put together a little compilation of writing on Lulu.com, called Too Much Dark Matter, Too Little Gray: An Anthology of Weird Fiction. In the description on Lulu, Mike calls it: “A new collection of short stories, two novellas and a short novel, drawn from the dark matter and filtered as best as possible through the gray.”

Gee, when I worked for the Starborg Collective, we called that making coffee. And to be honest this is a heady brew.

The book is 331 pages and perfect bound. In the copy I have, there is no Table of Contents (or well only a type of a table, more a diagram really that’s kind of on the state of life and the universe as a whole rather than on the state of the book itself), so the reader is left to go through the book a little bit blind. Just remember it starts small and builds up from there. Think of this as a chapbook for a fiction writer.

Mike has called himself a horror writer, but his type of horror isn’t your typical John Saul or Stephen King or Clive Barker. He’s less blood thirsty. The horrors he present have more to do with the dark parts of the human conscience or soul and those can be pretty scary monsters: the inhuman parts of being human. I read his tales and think more of Twilight Zone or Night Gallery – or maybe evocative of T.C. Boyle – they’re tales to make you think by. I like to think his specialty is in using the unreliable narrator. You might think the point of view is that of an eleven year old kid, but maybe not.

The stories in this compilation include: The Principle, Spooklights, The Shape of Things, Skeptic, The Explorer, Crowd Movers, The Efficiency Experts, Actress, Perfect Grades, Mamuk’s Edge, Last Holiday, Stephen Shirley’s Survival Show, Highway’s End (novelet), Fisherman Bob (novella), Janitorial Work (novella), and Students of Synchronism (short novel). The lengths range from a few hundred words to a brief novella. My impression is that his influences range from Lovecraft and Poe to Rod Serling, Roald Dahl (the adult stuff) and maybe a bit of Kevin Smith. However, having said that, there is a definite stamp of Robinson in it all. Some of it was scary, some quirky, some just thoughtful, some sad and some all of the above.

What I liked: I really liked the shorter works best. I think Mike’s quirky questioning of the universe shines through more brightly in his shorter works. Spooklights, which discusses intelligence and instinct is one of my favorites, as is The Shape of Things, which asks the age old question that Queen once asked: Who wants to live forever? Having said that, I must say I was really tickled reading Perfect Grades, a tale about a boy getting a special math tutor. In addition, living in Hollywood myself, I got a kick out of The Efficiency Experts and Actress, as well as Stephen Shirley’s Survival Show, which all poke fun at how things are done around here. Mike Robinson might write thoughtful stories, but it doesn’t mean they’re humorless.

Of the longer works, I appreciated Highway’s End and Janitorial Work the most. In Highway’s End, Mike does a good job of showing the ambivalence of a young man towards some of the things going on around him. He was also good at protraying someone with Alzheimer’s Disease, how they might phase in and out of awareness. Those two bits really grounded the rest of his story. In Janitorial Work, Mike shows how a young boy who wants to be a filmmaker stumbles upon something that could make the world a better place, or not, depending on people’s reactions.

What I liked a little less: I wasn’t as entranced by his longer works as I was by his shorter works. That’s not to say they weren’t well written. They were. As with his shorter pieces, they were thoughtful, well structured, and had interesting characters that took the reader on interesting tours and an interesting ending. It’s all good that way, but it’s heavy matter. It is dark matter. The condition of the human soul or conscience is not fairies, puppy dogs and flowers. Understanding the seriousness of his subject matter, Mike has broken these longer tales down into smaller edible sections. That helps a lot. They’re worth the read, but don’t be surprised if after reading them, you’re just a little suspicious of everything you see.

Too Much Dark Matter, Too Little Gray (2007) by Mike Robinson is on sale at Lulu.com. He has also written Vermin Street:Life Within These Walls (2003) as well as several other short stories.

There are many magical movies coming out in the next few months, such as The Spiderwick Chronicles, The Seeker: The Dark is Rising, and The Golden Compass. I don’t know why, but for some reason magical type movies, fairytales and whatnot have been, for a long time, relegated to the category of “kids’ stuff,” even when the content in those tales is very adult in nature. There is a tendency for people to “poopoo” movies and books of a fairytale type. People “poopooed” Harry Potter, and then The New York Times had to make a Children’s Best Seller list because the publishers of adult books were getting miffed that a child’s book could stay on for so long. Critics don’t take to fairytales seriously either, at least not the real fairytales. The Princess Bride, which came out 20 years ago, supposedly was not a favorite of critics, but audiences loved it. It’s now considered a classic and I know several people who can recite entire scenes from the movie (you’re probably doing it now).

Why am I telling you this?

Because the same thing is likely to happen with Stardust. Stardust is a classic fairytale. The novel and illustrated book are darker than the movie, but they were written by a man who loves fairytales and has told fairytales to his own children. The movie was made by people who also like fairytales. The actors (you can tell) also enjoy fairytales. The audience that will like this movie will be people who enjoyed Princess Bride, Pirates of the Caribbean, Peter Pan, Arabian Nights, 10th Kingdom, or The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. There are some critics who will hate this movie because it is too entertaining and not serious enough. And there will be some who hate it because it’s not “real” enough, not enough blood or gore. This is NOT Pan’s Labyrinth, nor is it Lord of the Rings.

It is a fairytale. It’s not going to jump into the action right away and it’s not going to spoon feed you the story. Like any good fairytale, it’s going to establish the characters and setting first (“Once upon a time…”). (And if you’ve read my blog before you know how much I despise the current addiction for jumping straight into the action. Not that there’s anything wrong with that but it’s not the only trick in the playbook.) And then it’s going to wind itself into the story before winding its way back out. That’s the way fairytales work.

You’re nine year old could probably safely see this movie. Yes there is sword fighting and violence, but we do not see blood (okay, we see a little, but it is after the fact and it is, in fact, blue blood). Yes, sex is implied, but only that. Boy walks into room with girl. Door closes. Baby shows up on door step 9 months later. Yes, there is a crossdressing gay character, but he’s no more wacky than your Uncle Irv and ever so entertaining.

I’m getting all of this negativity out of the way at the very beginning to get all you naysayers off my back.

Now I can gush.

I loved, Loved, LOVED this movie. I need to see it again. I forgot how much I love this story. Robert DeNiro’s character is DEFINITELY one of my favorites, though I have to say that the seven sons of the King of Stormhold are also quite entertaining. Claire Danes is a scrumptious heroine and I’d forgotten how cranky her character is (it’s one of the most endearing bits and Yvaine is actually much more cranky in the book) and Michelle Pfeiffer is a DELICIOUS witch. Charlie Cox as Tristan is absolutely yummy. Ian McKellan narrates in a most delightfully comforting manner. There are sword fights, magical duels, enchantments, a unicorn, a long lost prince and princess, and a 97 year old guard who is really quite funny.

Now I recommend you go see it and here is my list of DO’s and DON’T's for watching Stardust:

DO go see it, even if you go alone.

DO go see it as a matinee so there are fewer people in the theater with you and less of a chance that you’ll end up with someone chewing in your ear or talking behind you (besides – it’s August – who wouldn’t rather see a movie in an airconditioned theater in the middle of a hot summer’s day).

DON’T go in a rush after work and then leave as soon as the credits start (yes, there is a little surprise at the very, very end). You’re shorting yourself the experience of the movie if you do that. Make sure you take your time when you go. Get there early. Get your ticket. Pee. Get a drink. Find your seat. Meditate on your fairytale place. Enjoy the movie (quietly) and don’t leave until the very last credit.

DON’T go with any whiny friends or people who have to ask what’s going on or who have to leave RIGHT NOW or who don’t like fairytales or who have any other agenda than to sit and enjoy the movie. (*SPECIAL NOTE TO SOCAL PEOPLE: DO NOT GO WITH INDUSTRY PEOPLE. You know how they spoil a good movie talking about how this, that, or the other was done wrong.)

DO go with like minded people who trust the filmmakers will be filling in the story as they go along, who don’t need the entire plot whispered to them, and who DO like fairytales or Neil Gaiman or both.

And I also recommend that you go get the novel and the illustrated book and read them.

Both.

Twice.

Crossposted on MySpace and Tribe.

Announcement – there is a contest deadline looming!  SFPoetry is having it’s second annual poetry contest and the deadline is this Friday, the 24th.  The form for this contest is the sonnet. I haven’t worked on sonnets in ages really and forgotten how much I enjoy them. It’s like doing a math word problem, but with words. So not only do you have to come up with a poetic idea that fits within a scifi/fantasy format, but you also need to fit that idea into an Italian, Shakespearean, or Spenserian sonnet form.  IT’s not easy, but it is easy for the poem you’re working on to sound forced or trite – like a bad limerick – unless you really work at it. I did one of each. I might be too close to them – I can’t tell if they sound decent or just really bad. We’ll see. I’m glad I did this, no matter what the outcome, it reminded me of why I write.

Ever have one of those synchronicity moments? Those times when complete or almost complete strangers seem to really get you?  That happened this last week.  On a couple of blog boards or forums I left comments and got replies back from the authors but they got my name wrong. But not REALLY.  They both just HAPPENED to use names that I choose for myself when I want a fake name to go by that still kind of represents me. And they pulled it straight from thin air.  Just goes to prove my theory that writing is magic and writers are magicians, sorcerers, and otherwise witchy and seer-ific people who just KNOW stuff.

Speaking of knowing stuff, my sister had her 40th birthday yesterday and I was going to blog about it yesterday, but completely forgot. I did remember to call her.

I remember bringing her home from the hospital.

Speaking with her on the phone last night we were talking about how some years are just like that when it comes to birthdays.  You just KNOW it’s going to be one of those years. Things just happen and it’s immediately obvious that you’re not supposed to celebrate your birthday well, on your birthday. For instance, I sent her her bday box to arrive on Wednesday.  She opened it and put her bday swag into a Peet’s bag to take home (she, like me, uses public transportation and this is much easier than taking home a big box). And then left the Peet’s bag on the BART train she was on. She contacted the Lost and Found, but chances are it’s long gone. And it will take three (3) weeks for BART to get back to her as to whether anyone turned it in (so if anyone reading this lives in the San Francisco area and saw that Peets bag let me know!).

THEN, I sent her another gift overnight. Just so she’d have something to open on the day. It was going to be like a stocking stuffer for Christmas so she’s just getting it a little early is all. Well, she left that at work, perched on her desk.  At least she can open it today. And mom’s gift to her didn’t make it either.  It’s waiting for her to pick up at the post office.

She did, however, manage to score a mink stole yesterday whilst shopping in a vintage store. One of the things I really appreciate about my sister is her wicked sense of humor. She said she was enjoying sitting in bed with her new stole on – we called it her bed jacket. Some things are just meant to be that way – enjoyed as they come to you and not as you go to find them.

Now, while I’ve finished the poems for the contest, I still have another deadline looming ahead for a holiday paranormal romantic anthology. I’m really enjoying getting the feel of the story I’m writing for that. And, as I volunteered to “read” at my next writer’s club meeting, I’d like to have something ready that’s actually worth reading. So, I need to work on that.

AND BY THE WAY – if there are any of you reading this that live in Los Angeles, please come visit our Mid-Wilshire California Writer’s Club sometime!  We’d love to see you. Our next meeting is September 1st in the community room at the Fairfax Library, 111 S. Gardner, Los Angeles (between 3rd and Beverly), 3-5 pm. Meetings are free as we aren’t officially chartered yet. Our next meeting will have a presentation on how to pitch to agents, plus we’ll have an open mic so people can get to know each others writing styles.

I also have some things I’m reading that I hope to review when I get a chance (Brendan Connell and Mike Robinson being two authors you might read about here sometime in the future) and of course I still owe a couple of my Critique Partners feedback on some of their WIPs.

Life is full.

Sometimes cool things really do happen.  They may or may not happen to you, but if they’re happening near you, it’s still pretty darn cool, and you never know, you might be next.

This week, I won the 500 word challenge on MySpace. Okay, I was late, there were only three entries and Reid needs to take a little break from running it, but it’s cool!  Someone liked my story enough to say, “Hey, you did good.”

Which is what happened to another MySpace friend of mine, Matt. You can read his blog here or follow the links to the Hollywood Reporter article. Basically, Matt and his writing partner are writing the remake of a Hollywood classic, Isle of the Dead for RKO Pictures. 

That is huge!  So, I just want to raise a glass of cyber champagne in honor of Matt.  I know he’s worked hard; worked his butt off, to get to this.  Sometimes, if you keep at it, it really does happen for you!

Cheers, Matt!

I’ve been woefully lax in my participation in Reid’s 500 Word Challenge on MySpace. So, I decided to make an effort this time and even though it’s still coming in late, here’s the entry. The first line given last Monday was: Normal people have it easy.

Normal People

“Normal people have it easy. It’s never going to be easy for you.” My da’ touched my nose with his finger. “But it’ll be simple.”

This was just as bad as Mum telling me I’d always be “distinctively attractive.” I snorted and dragged my backpack up two flights of stairs to my room in the attic where I threw myself on my bed in a huff.

Bedroom windows facing all eight directions of the compass showed me mountains, lakes, rivers, fields ready for harvest, and the town Smithie, Jerold’s Da’. A grand room for a grand future.

All I wanted was to go to the school dance and fit in for once.

But, I was Sevanna – seventh child of the seventh child, born on the seventh day of the week. Gifted with being instinctively intuitive – and Cursed; Saturday’s Child must work for a living. Reluctantly, I opened my school books and settled in to do my homework, absentmindedly twirling my hair round my wand, thinking about Jerold, and dances, and being beautiful.

#

“Sevanna! Sevanna! Open the door!” As from far away, I heard pounding. I realized I’d been studying for hours. The sun was setting behind the tallest peak of the range that lay to the west. I tripped over my school robes to reach the door before it splintered open.

“What did you do!” Dad’s eyes were ablaze with alarm and fear as he looked down on me. Silently, I ticked through everything I’d done that day to see what I might be in trouble for now. As the youngest, it happened a lot, though these days my brothers and sisters were gone and not likely to get me into any trouble. My stomach knotted as I thought of traded lunches and passed notes in class.

“I don’t know. What?”

“First, put your wand away!”

I looked down and noticed sprinkles of pink, lavender, gold, and blue trailing from the tip and finding their way across the floor and down cracks into the house below or out the window, following their own little courses to who knows where. Hastily I put away my wand.

Da’ took a deep breath.

“Did you remember to ground and center before starting your homework?”

“I was just reading!”

“Honey, what’s going on!” Mum’s voice floated up the twisted stair case, worry hanging on every word. “I saw sparks coming from Sevanna’s room-“ Mum looked at me in alarm. The same shock and fear registering on her face as on Da’s. Wordlessly, Mum turned me around to face the mirror on the closet door.

Tendrils of gold hair framed a face cleared of acne, refined, having lost all traces of baby fat. Full lashes framed sparkling green eyes that had no use for glasses. And the dress; gossamer as moonlight, the skirt floated as I walked. Downstairs I heard a knock at the door.

“Is Sevanna ready for the dance?” Jerold’s voice floated up to the ears of my shocked and nervous parents.

Or perhaps a Style Snob?  Are you so hung up on what’s marketable and “in” and what the acceptable “tags” are that you don’t pay attention to anything else in what’s being written and what’s being read? Do you poopoo past classical authors as being anachronistic simply because they don’t move fast enough for your post-modern 21st century gotta have the most recent technology and no attention span life? If so, you’ll probably be really irritated with this blog and should probably move on to something else.

When I was growing up and daydreaming about being a writer, the LAST thing I thought about was fashion or style. Well, maybe I thought a bit about what I would be wearing whilst signing books, or spent some consideration on what made up correct writer’s togs (sweater and jeans or tshirt and shorts were my two favorite choices) but that’s about it.  One of the reasons I was drawn to writing was because I wanted to create my own worlds in my own way without any inference from anyone else. And I also knew that it wouldn’t matter what I looked like or how old I was, because those things don’t matter in writing like they do in other professions. 

I wanted that freedom to be me in my writing.  I still believe in that freedom, just as I still believe that I should be able to wear whatever I want to work. As long as I get the job done and I’m modestly covered and hygenically clean, it’s no one else’s business how I dress for work. 

Recently, however, I’ve come to realize how much of a “high fashion” industry writing has become.  I’m not just talking how suddenly it’s very important whether or not a writer is attractive or young enough to spew out a best seller a year for their publishing house, I’m also talking about the style of writing now viewed as acceptable in the world.

In the introduction to George MacDonald’s Lilith, C.S. Lewis talks about the difference between how a story is written, and the story itself. What makes it a classic story? Lewis points out that MacDonald was a writer of his time. He was from the early 19th century and son of a Presbyterian minister and he had a particular florid style of writing that many people could not get through in Lewis’ time and most people can’t through in the 21st century.  However, the stories he wrote (The Light Princess, The Princess and Curdie, Lilith, At the Back of the North Wind) became classics.  What did people actually remember? Not the writing style, but the story itself.  As Mercedes Lackey once pointed out (and several other writers as well, I think) there is no such as “deathless prose.” 

Louisa May Alcott is another writer who might get passed over when judged on style.  She wrote after the Civil War during the 19th century.  She could be viewed as too sentimental, too stuck in her transcendentalist 19th century view of the world, but people love her children’s stories (Little Women, Little Men, Jo’s Boys, The Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom, The Old Fashioned Girl).  And she was considered a feminist in her time. Some of her finest tales were for adults (Work being her best).  But I’ve known people who turn up their noses at her because they just can’t get past her style.

Let’s see – who else could we put in that list: Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, William Congreve, Ben Jonson, Jonathon Swift, Emily Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Aphra Behn, Ayn Rand, Mark Twain, Laura Ingalls Wilder, L.M. Montgomery…..HOMER, Dante Alighieri, Milan Kundera, Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco…..George Eliot, Thomas Hardy….

All shuffled under the rug because they “move too slow,” “just can’t stand that style of writing,” “too sentimental,” “too much description,” “too….”

You get the idea.

Each writer wrote according to the style and fashion of their times, some varying a bit ouside their norm.  I don’t know how many times I’ve heard (or read) people making disparaging remarks because of the above writer’s writing styles.  I’m not talking about the types of stories they wrote, but how they wrote it.  Yes, Thomas Hardy spends a lot of time on description. Too much for most people these days. But guess what, if it hadn’t been for that description his books couldn’t so easily have been made into movies.  They were cinematic in their description.  People didn’t have movies back then. They had books. Jane Austen may have spent a lot of time describing the manners of people in the drawing room, but in her world, that was where the real action happened. Every little thing in the drawing room meant something, or she wouldn’t have put it on the page.

It’s called an education, people.  You read what has been written before you. You learn how to decipher the style and find the story.  In so doing you learn history and how it works.  You learn to see the world through an alternate world view.  Why do you think Jules Verne wrote what he wrote? Or Philip K. Dick? And since humans have such a short attention span and memory, perhaps if time is taken to learn the different world views and history, maybe, just maybe, this once, history won’t repeat itself.

Let’s begin again – and I’ll try to be more straightforward.

These days the only way to begin the story is in the middle of the action. Draw the reader in as fast as you can.  Kill someone off in the first paragraph and have them gripped! Publishers want readers to be hooked by the first page and you’re competing for a spot in the sun, a slice of the pie and it’s all a zero sum equation and there’s no room for anyone else! Right?

Wrong. Writing (and getting published) is NOT a zero sum equation.  No, you will not be putting yourself behind if you bother to help other writers in their journey forward. And Yes, there are several ways to begin a story.  Sometimes it’s with dialogue between the characters (introducing the characters and how they interact with each other IS relevant to the story, don’t you agree?).  Sometimes the author can draw the reader into the story as they describe a trip down a long single lane road, describing the leaves in autumn as the car or carriage turns the bend and finds the house where the characters live (and before you know it, you know the setting and characters and are halfway through the first chapter). 

Both of those two methods of beginning a story are perfectly acceptable, if not fashionable in the current writing climate.

In other words, if “It was a dark and stormy night” was relevant to the story and how it begins, then there’s nothing inherently wrong with using it. It may have gone out of “fashion” because it was used badly, but if used well, there’s nothing wrong with it.

Another fashion I’m tired of hearing about? The whole dialogue tag debate.   Some people will insist that the only tag needed, if needed at all, is “said.” And to use anything else is wrong, bad, horrible, awful, a disgrace and you obviously don’t know what you’re doing if you say use “grimaced” or “smirked” or “screeched” say as a dialogue tag. Others insist that the only tag needed is an action tag. 

I beg to differ.

First page of Little Women, Alcott uses “sighed,” “grumbled,” “added,” and “said,” all to great effect as she introduces her characters.  Those tags helped describe the basic, fundamental characteristics of her characters (Jo grumbled, Meg sighed, Amy added, Beth (the sister with the least ego) said). In Old Fashioned Girl, on the first page, Alcott at first doesn’t use any tags at all, moves on to ”said” eventually, and “demanded” after that (and if you know Tom then you know that “demanded” would be the mode in which he spoke).

The first question you ask yourself when you write should NOT be what is fashionable, or what is marketable, or what is the current style! It should be what serves the scene? What serves the story? If you are writing a brother and sister bickering in rapid succession (the opening of Old Fashioned Girl) then you may not need any tags.  If you are introducing four very different young women in the first paragraph of a story (the opening of Little Women), then tags may exactly be what you need to help differentiate between them.  But of course, unless you bother to read something other than 21st century literature, you won’t know that. 

A lot of that type of discussion is nothing more than discussing whether or not your nail polish should be brown or brownish red, really.  What if China Red is the best to go with what you have on? Or Velvet Black? Are you going to balk at using those colors because they aren’t in fashion? Or are going to go with your gut feeling, cut the restraints of the publishing/fashion industry, use what works best for you, and possibly create a new fashion trend?

Do you like fables? Fairy tales? Mythic Realism? Writers like Patricia McKillip, Charles DeLint, and Neil Gaiman at his most fantastical?  Then you’ll like Shimmer, I believe. It is a beautiful little zine, perfect bound, with eight art and nine fiction pieces (and one interview); around 80 pages of content when you subtract the front and back matter. I’m not sure about their other issues, but I was left shaking my head wondering if I would ever be able to write as beautifully as the authors included in this issue of Shimmer.  I believe the readers and editors did a fine job of choosing material.  In some cases it was like reading tapestry.

I actually finished reading it a two or three weeks ago, but I’ve been so busy I put off writing about it until I was rested enough to write about it well. And so we begin.

While the general font for reading the stories is in Times New Roman 10 (one of those fonts that’s easier on the eyes to read in print, by the way) the flourishes, side bars, and quotes are done in an elegant copperplate handwriting font, which adds to the fairy story quality of the zine. In fact, if you go to the website (and you should – here it is again), you will see where you can click on some of the stories and hear portions of them read in a fairy tale manner with some accompanying pictures and the copperplate font trailing across the screen.  It gives you a definite flavor of what you will receive once you subscribe.

The first tale is titled “Juana and the Dancing Bear” by N.A. Bourke.  Told from the bear’s point of view, this is the story of two entertainers (the bear and his jester, Just-Simon) who travel around to make a living.  In the course of their travels they come to the court of Queen Isabella, who is soon to give away her daughter in marriage.  There is, of course, a catch. Princess Juana has palsy. This is a secret that the court has kept and that the Queen hopes will remain a secret until after her daughter is safely married and taken care of.  Well – things don’t always work out the way we envision them.

In a magazine full of first class tales, this was one of the best. The editors believe so as well, as it’s the tale headlining the zine and is the subject matter for both the front cover and an illustration in the magazine (both done excellently by Sandro Castelli, who also illustrates a picture for “Catch of the Day,” as well as the Faerie picture on the back cover).  A true fable, “Juana and the Dancing Bear” is something to read by the light of the fire while the moon is high and full on a crisp, cold night.
“Duets” by Philip J. Lees is clever. It’s fun, light (not too light), sexy, and clever.  While not one of my favorites, it was a fun read.  In brief, it is the tale of a minstrel who meets his match.

“Tom Cofferwillow Comes Undone” by Stephen L. Moss tells of a man, reading a book, reaching for a smoke, when……and so the tale begins. One of the joys of this piece (though it may be frustrating for some) is the language.  I don’t know if Moss studied a dialect or made one up or did both and mushed it together, but it’s a bit like reading Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky.  You have to derive sense out of the surrounding context in order to get the meaning of the words. Even then, you might just shrug, because even if the word is still meaningless after all that, it’s fun to pronounce. I wondered, while reading, if this story grew out of a workshop exercise on making up words and language.  The strength of this story was in the language.  If it hadn’t been for that, the story would not have appeared as magical, I don’t think.

The next piece is simply a piece of artwork titled “Lucy,” by Chrissy Ellsworth, depicting a little girl with two fairies. The caption reads “Lucy suspected that the fairies were not properly chewing their food and had become too portly to carry her home” (Shimmer, Winter 2007, p. 25).  It’s the kind of thing to make you smile.

These pieces are followed by a distinctly modern day quasi-scifi tale that pays homage to the X-Files, but has a sort of a Men in Black flavor as well.  It’s not like those stories at all – it just gives them a nod, of sorts. Oh, and to top it all off, it’s a fishing story. Yes, really.  It’s the story of a man who went fishing and what happened then. Like the Lees tale, “Duets,” it is clever, and while not one of my favorites, again, was worth the read.

The Interview with Cherie Priest was good enough for me to feel both admiration and intimidation and wonder what the hell I was doing getting involved in this writing gig. On the whole, she seems like a nice girl. The kind of goth girl you could introduce to your family and have them love her by the end of the evening.

“Eagle-haunted Lake Sammamish” by Cat Rambo was one of my favorites (up there with “Juana and the Dancing Bear” and “Sparrow and Egg”).  For one, this has some of my favorite “stuff” in it. Growing up in Washington State I just assumed dryads and naiads existed for real (and they do – see the illustration by Stephen Stanley to prove it). They did for me. I went to camp with people from Lake Sammamish.  Heck, I think there was a serial killer that hung around Lake Sammamish.  So, I was reading this story carefully, but I’ve seen Cat Rambo around a bit lately (she was in the Winter 2007 issue of Fantasy Magazine and was most recently online at Clarkesworld) and she knows how to handle her fables.  This is the story of a couple who go to investigate an investment they made and come back with more than they bargained for.  It made me cry. It was a beautiful story. I wonder if she’ll ever write a continuance to it. I would like to think so.

“Night Milling” by Mike Driver was one of my least favorite, maybe because it was horror. It’s a story of revenge and death.  I’m not saying it wasn’t well done. It was for what it was.  I like horror elements and Driver did those parts well, but horror stories as a whole aren’t usually my faves.  In addition, I was a little confused at the end – I got it – but it took a reread – and it just left me with a down feeling.  Not a visceral, shivery feeling, but an “aw, that’s too bad” feeling.  But that’s like saying it was a “B” paper in a stack of “B+’s” and “A-’s” and “A’s”.

“Dwell on Her Graciousness” by Dario Ciriello was the second science fiction fable of this issue.  This was an interesting mix of space ship science fiction and religious myth.  A sister of a particular Goddess worship religious order has been sent out to the outskirts of space with a research team to help research a space anomaly.  While this was an interesting read, it was not one of my favorites (though it did have one of my favorite illustrations by Fatima Azimova). It was intriguing to see where the author was going to take this story.  It both did and didn’t go where I was expecting.
Finally, “Sparrow and Egg” by Amal El-Mohtar is one of those tales that should be put in it’s own little hardback book with illustrations, ostensibly sold for children, but really there for the grownups to read and learn from. It’s in the same caliber (IMHO) as “Velveteen Rabbit” and “Love You Forever.”  This final story was very brief, illustrated by a simple photograph of an egg shell (by Mary Robinette Kowal, Art Director at Shimmer).  It’s a nice photograph until you read the story. Then it’s a great photograph. And THAT is all I’m going to say about THAT. So there.

And now, I really must go. Pye has decided he’d rather sit on the keyboard than have me type on it. Keep writing and have a good night. Until next time.