I wish I said this first...

"A good story often reads so easily that civilians seem to think that
the darn things write themselves. Whenever I leave the house, I make
sure that one of my novels is hard at work. I expect five pages by the
time I get back."

- David Morrell


I mean, don't you.

I feel like I almost have a real blog. An bona fide spammer made a comment. I'm on my way now!!

Through Painted Deserts and Plains.

A few years ago, like almost 20, I spent my summers working in the kitchen at a well know youth ministy's Colorado Ranch. It was at the time, a perfect life. I worked in the summers and avoided the scorching Texas heat. My regular job was only budgeted for nine months a year, except I could pay a little extra for health insurance for the other three month. So, I had insurance, no expenses, use of a vehicle and a home nestled in the valley of the San Isabel National Forrest. Doesn't get much better.

I thought about this today when I started reading Through Painted Deserts : Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road by Donald Miller. I love it and hate it right now. I love it because Miller notices everyting, from the traffic in Houston at 2am to the different species of trees on Interstate 45 from Houston to Dallas and how they hide everything at night. I hate it because it is a testament to my stupid fears.

The camp photographer Deb and I, spent our off days traveling Colorado, back roads and old mining towns. She'd snap rolls and rolls of film, I'd scribble really bad poetry into old lab notebooks. I did that back then, write really bad poetry. I was a lousy poet, because I didn't like to read poetry. If you don't like reading it, you don't need to be writing it. But I wasn't smart enough to know that back then. I wrote about her photographs, mourning that the black and white prints we developed in the camp darkroom didn't capture the differences in the green of the trees and the green of the grasses. They couldn't give the sound, the whisper, of the July wind in the Aspens.

After our adventures, we'd take the prints and the notebooks of bad poems and sit in laundry room, waiting for the industrial washers to finish our week's worth of dirty shorts and wool socks and plot the next adventure. It didn't take to long to realize that we would soon run out of places within a couple hours of the camp, and we never could get two consecutive days off. So we started devising Plan B. A summer of cruising. A cross country trip in her Subaru. We'd start in California, where she lived the rest of the year, and end up in New Jersey, at my grandparents. We'd take pictures, write stories of the people and places in the pictures.

We never went. Wasn't money, we could've worked it out. For me, it was fear. Don't know what I was afraid of, maybe the unknown. But it kept me from what could have been the best summer. But those silly voices, saying it was a stupid plan, it was irresponsible *(if you cna't be irresponsible when you're 23 and single, when can you be?) It was scary. I don't know if Deb ever went. I hope she did.

And now I read this stupid book and wonder what could have been.

Adjectives that will never be used to describe my books

....And I think I'll be okay with that.

I got my new catalog from Quality Paperback Book club today. The sheer number of adjectives and adverbs used to promote books is mindboggling. I'm thinking of suggesting a rationing program. Conserve adjectives and adverbs, save some for future generations.

The gushing reviews are so "stunning, dazzling, and powerful" that I want to order each and every "astonishing" new novel by every "beloved" and "best-selling" author. I have found the ads to be "[S]trangely affecting." On one page, I can order a "feat of imaginative sympathy and technique..." because the author "delivers images of odd beauty and a mounting existential distress that hangs around long after." Mounting existential distress that hangs around long after? Sounds like the last time I tried to cook Thai food from scratch.

These authors work with a "Dickensian vocabulary and an Atwood-like ability to meld literature with science fiction." The novels themselves have "deceptive simplicity,...extraordinary emotional depth and resonance." They are "finely wrought and shimmering with intelligence."

But wait. I could also have books that are "painfully funny and brilliantly executed." "Utterly original." "A dazzling epic."

Do writers sit down and say, "I think today I'll write a novel that's 'buoyant and beautiful'?" Or "daring and unforgettable?" How about "witty, wise and heartbreaking?" "Brilliantly absurd?" "delightfully improbable?" Or, "Enchanting...beautifully crafted and as dazzingly imaginative as it is dizzyingly romantic."

I think the world would be a better place if someone, preferably someone rich and anonymous, bought every book reviewer a copy of Strunk's Elements of Style. There are adverbs and adjectives being ABUSED out there, people! It is up to those who love words to rescue them and redeem then to infrequent usage so that they may regain the power and the glory that is in excellent descriptive writing. Please, send a book reviewer a verb. You'll be glad you did.

Had the subtitle all wrong...

It's not "a bag lady's tale", it's the "Hand-bag Lady's tale". Kinda my tribute to Margaret Atwood on the way. I wonder what Ms. Atwood would do with my material. I'm thinking my main character needs lots of lunatics in her life, so she might be a waitress. At an Applebee's kind of place. Managed by an Iranian, like my old pal Moshi. And his rich cousins, Khalid and Omar. So the insanity is balanced. Or she can have a computer support job. On the phone, so we don't have too many customers to describe.Something that keeps the number of main people in the single digits. After my last book, I need a set number of people to keep up with. A girl CAN have too many imaginary friends, doncha know.

Speaking of friends, some of my real life friends want to be "in" the book. Hmmm, what if I do and they don't like it? Or if I fictionalize them so much they don't recognize themselves? I have nightmares of Truman Capote, who used all his friends conversations in his stories. The poor society ladies read all about their own lives in the New Yorker.

I know, I can have the main character, still unnamed, whining about listening to her walking buddies, J,A & C, who spend ENTIRELY too much time complaining about how hard it is to find size four jeans in this town. Or maybe size 2? Then I can jet them out to Aruba for the rest of the book. So they'll be there and still be my friends when it's over.

A Purse Driven Life - A Bag Lady's Tale

I think that's looking like the title of my NaNoWriMo novel. Of course that could change, but I'm liking the idea now. My first idea was something I've already worked on a bit, like a couple of pages of really bad writing. Really bad, the main character bored even me. If I don't want to spend time with a character, I doubt a reader would. So, I thought I would start over on the chemical plant thriller. But since NaNoWriMo should really be brand spanking new really bad fiction, I decided to try this new idea.

I know, a Christian Writer had an advice book by just about the same title.The Purse-driven Life: It Really Is All About Me by Anita Renfroe. I haven't read it, but I did read a few pages on Amazon. It looked fairly interesting and I'm sure Anita is a wise and witty woman. But it is nonfiction, and since A) I haven't seen it on the best seller list anywhere, and B) Titles aren't copyrighted, I think I'll snag the title. Because it so fits my idea. As much as I'd like to use her subtitle, I'll not steal that too. Gotta have some originality.

But, the story:

A woman dies and her daughter and niece find over fifty purses in her closet. Her life is then told in relation to some of the purses that the women remember the older woman owning. Not a spiritual growth book in any way, more like catharsis. But not really, because my book will be FICTION and certainly NOT based on any mothers I may have known in ANY way. So don't get any ideas, it's NOT a memoir. And if you accuse me of writing about actual events, I will put you in the book and my friend, it won't be pretty.

I still need to do some important research. I only own one purse. Off to the mall!