The Passionate, Accurate Story

I’m rereading Carol Bly’s The Passionate, Accurate Story: Making Your Heart’s Truth into Literature. While there are many books I enjoy, there are very few I want to reread. Bly’s book is one that I could reread more than once.

Part of my issue with rereading is that as soon as I start, I recognize everything as it’s being said in a bad deja-vu way. Not so with The Passionate, Accurate Story. There’s something about Bly’s writing style, a complexity, that makes it darn-near impossible for me to remember that I’ve read it before, which means the book seems fresh upon the reread.

When Bly discusses writing fiction, for her it’s not simply about spinning a good yarn. She wants writers to delve into deeper values and ethical issues within their stories. She includes an exercise for listing values on pages 39-40, which I completed. Here is her exercise with my answers:

“1. Two goals or values which make life good or bearable or wood if they were in operation.”

a. Teaching/encouraging children to be independent thinkers.

b. Empathy – basic human empathy for another’s suffering. (I use empathy rather than sympathy for a reason. It implies that everyone can take their own suffering & see how it relates to the suffering of others.)

“2. Two goals or values which cause injustice and suffering or lessening of joy.”

a. Helicopter parents who stifle their children’s lives out of misplaced fear.

b. Excessive & wasteful consumption (of resources, of consumer products).

“3. Two missing goals or behaviors.”

a. We don’t recycle all that we can.

b. There’s more work in the world begging to be done (proper recycling), yet we aren’t putting people to work on these things (too many unemployed people who’d rather be working).

“4. Two injustices which you see about you and should keep and eye on, even on your wedding day.”

a. Too many people in this world trying to control others (emotionally, physically, mentally) – not enough of letting people live their own lives.

b. Religious & political hypocrisy. “Do as I say, not as I do.” “You have to follow my rules, but I get to break them all I want.”

Bly illustrated completely different values from these and she says that day-to-day, your own values list will change. The point of the exercise is to show that there are all kinds of values bumping up against each other in our world and this is how it should be in our stories. While one of the values I’ve listed, say, our over-consumption, might be the main point of a story, the other values on my list could be used to create conflict with or add depth to the main value.

It’s this sort of atypical writing advice, along with her nugget, “That is the first thing I thought of: now what is the second?”  that makes Bly’s book worth successive readings. (pg. 110)

This book has been seminal for at least three writers I know (me being one of them). Even though Bly focuses on how to develop the short story, her book has been an encouragement to the three of us in tackling novel-length works.

For these reasons and more, I need to invest in a copy of The Passionate, Accurate Story for my personal collection, rather than checking it out of the public library. It’s worth the commitment.

Can You Be Entrepreneurial & Averse to Financial Risk?

So, I’m doing the dishes this evening and this question pops into my head …

Can someone have the entrepreneurial spirit and also be averse to financial risk?

I have no idea why this particular question came to mind. I hadn’t even been thinking about entrepreneurial endeavors or financial risk aversion, but one synapse clicked with another and there I was, thinking this thought.

Often when I read about entrepreneurial endeavors, there is some element of financial risk involved. Could I, being financially conservative (i.e. a tightwad), ever be considered entrepreneurial? Is the willingness to take financial risk irrevocably intertwined with how entrepreneurs are defined?

While risk-taking is certainly a common trait among entrepreneurs, I don’t believe that the only way to take a risk is by putting one’s self into a monetary bind.

I asked Hubby his opinion. He, too, didn’t think financial risk was necessary to being entrepreneurial, that it was enough for a person to risk reputation or criticism for a project or idea. He also related my question to a current thread he’s following on a discussion board. Someone there claimed that no one with a centrist view could come up with any good ideas. (!) Only extremists (extreme liberals or extreme conservatives) could have good ideas. (!!!) Aside from believing this is utter hogwash, the notion that one HAD to take financial risks in order to be an entrepreneur was in itself an extremist position. Once an extremist idea takes hold, if no centrist views are allowed, the quickest way to invalidate the extremist is to take an even more extreme position, which makes the first extremist idea appear to be centrist. Can you imagine how nasty this cycle could get?

Hubby had a great illustration for this. If financial risk and entrepreneurship are tied together, then to be an extreme entrepreneur you’d have to be willing to dig Granny out of her grave and pluck her gold fillings in order to finance your entrepreneurial endeavor.

What do you think? Can you be an entrepreneur and not be willing to max your credit cards and take a second mortgage on the house to realize your dream?

Welcome Tourists – Shop Locally

Hubby and I were in St. Cloud today and saw a billboard of the St. Cloud Area Chamber of Commerce. In big letters it said:

STAY LOCAL.

In smaller letters it expounded on that message with:

Shop local. Eat local. Invest local.

This is a common sentiment among communities, yet it is diametrically opposed to another goal communities want to achieve – that of courting tourists. On first blush, these ideas may seem to work together. Wouldn’t it be great to have everyone who lives in a community shop locally and also nab tourists for their spending potential? Trouble is that EVERY community wants this, but in order to have this happen, those tourists have to leave their own local communities in order to be tourists in another community. Which means they are no longer shopping locally.

Billboards such as the one we saw annoy me no end because of their inherent contradiction. Besides, as a tourist in St. Cloud, seeing that sign made me feel not particularly welcome. If you only want local dollars, I’ll go somewhere else.

Rather than convince people they need to shop based on whether they are residents or visitors, how about offering products and services I need and throw in excellent customer service and decent hours? Make sure you have a web presence and expand your market beyond a limited geographic region. Then it won’t matter where your customers live.

(I don’t mean to pick on St. Cloud exclusively. Its billboard expressed the same slogan my own community is guilty of chanting. I don’t like it wherever it is used.)

The Dryer Seems to Be Fixed

A few weeks ago, while Hubby and Young Son were bear hunting, I threw a load of laundry into the dryer, heard a noise coming from it that wasn’t usual, smelled a slight burning smell, and promptly turned off the dryer and unplugged it. Burning smells make me nervous and I don’t like to take any chances. We figured that was it for the dryer – we needed to replace it. (We’d called a business about repairing it, but were told that with the age of the dryer, it would probably be cheaper to buy new than to repair the old.)

Today, because we figured it would do no harm, Hubby and I decided to take apart the dryer and see if anything looked amiss. Because the back had obvious screws to remove, we started there. Once we got the back off, we figured the top would easily pop up. Wrong. We peered at all the seams, looking for ways to maneuver the top off. We were certain their were hooks somewhere holding the thing tightly in place. No success.

It dawned on me that maybe we could find a solution online. Perhaps someone had posted a diagram showing how to take apart the dryer. I did a search for our dryer – a Maytag Dependable Care – and within a few short links found what I needed. ApplianceAid.com had a list of troubleshooting items to choose from and gave good instructions, including pictures, for how to dismantle the dryer and what to look for as far as potential problems.

Turns out we had started on the wrong side of the dryer. There was no need to take off the back. We had to go to the front, remove the door, then the front plate, then the bulk head. We thought perhaps there was a problem with the fan blower, but that looked fine. So did the belt. We couldn’t find any obviously broken part, but the dryer was filthy inside. We vacuumed everything we could reach and took off the fins (the things  that tumble the clothes) inside the drum. We discovered one coin in each of two fins, plus two coins inside the remaining fin. That certainly explains the constant rattling we’d become accustomed to. We also found several perfectly round felt balls that had formed inside the fins.

Three felt balls and 31-cents found in fins of Maytag dryer.

After the thorough cleaning, we put the dryer back together, plugged it in, and gave it a whirl. I caught whiff of the same burning smell I had smelled when I put the dryer out of commission. We let it run for a minute or two and the smell disappeared. It was heating properly, too. And, bonus! No rattling. We dried a pair of jeans in it and all was fine, so I grabbed the rest of the damp load off the lines and threw them in. No problem. (About 5 minutes after I brought the clothes inside, it began raining. What a close call.)

It appears that our dryer is working again (crossing our fingers it stays that way). The nearest we can figure is that the dust that had built up inside had gotten on the heating element, producing the burning smell (like dust on a hot light bulb). What a relief to have one problem solved.

The Ideal Laundromat

So the engine is fried on one car and today, as I was going to take 2 loads of wet clothing to the laundromat to dry them, the exhaust fell apart on our other car. Ask me how I feel about that.

Young Son and I carried the 2 baskets of heavy, wet laundry to the laundromat 8 or so blocks away. We groused most of the way there, pausing periodically to give our arms a rest.

After throwing the laundry into dryers, we had a half-hour to kill in the laundromat. We both observed how trashed the place looked. What is it about laundromats that they tend to be slummy and filthy, places no one feels safe hanging out in? As we discussed the general state of disrepair, I told Young Son my vision of an ideal laundromat.

An ideal laundromat would …

Be clean.

Have all front-loading washers (no top-loading models).

Have a lounge-like seating area, with couches, upholstered chairs & footstools, along with a few cafe tables & chairs.

Have free wi-fi internet access.

Have a coffee shop/snack bar.

Have an area for young children to play (so they don’t get bored and start playing with the laundry carts or sitting on the washing machines or folding tables).

Have an attendant to make the place feel safer, to assist with any laundry issues, and to keep the place well-maintained.

Is this really too much to ask? Does the laundromat experience have to be an onerous one?

[Someone. Anyone. Steal my idea. PLEASE!!!]

Talk Sex with Sue

Do you know Sue Johanson? If you don’t, you should. Sue is a Canadian woman who reminds you of your grandma, except that she is very open to talking about sex. She has a show – Talk Sex with Sue – that reruns late nights on cable (Oxygen TV).

Last night, Sue gave a 2-hour presentation at St. Cloud State University. Hubby and I attended. Sue is just as humorous and forthright about sex in person as she is on her television show. She spoke to a packed house, the majority of which were typical college-aged students. Hubby and I felt like the oldest people in the audience.

The premise of Sue’s talk was to discuss sex in a way that is not covered in typical sex ed classes, to talk about sex for enjoyment, rather than sex as something to be ashamed of. She stressed that while sex should be pleasurable, it should also be done safely in order to prevent unwanted pregnancy, disease, or injury.

Sue covered a lot of ground in her talk. She pointed out the many ways that adults shame children (particularly their own children & particularly their girls) about sex, even going so far as to never presenting diagrams of exterior female genitalia in sex ed classes. (Think about this for a moment. We got the diagram of the interior, but I don’t remember getting a diagram of the exterior. I don’t think this has changed any.) We don’t even have much in the way of language for exterior female genitalia. Instead, we refer to the area as “Down There.” Think about all the terms we have for male genitalia.

In addition to covering societal attitudes about sex, Sue talked about the normal functions of the various parts of the male and female genitalia and reproductive organs. She spent quite a lot of time on female sexuality, mostly because girls are taught that to be “nice,” they ought not to be sexual, so they don’t even get to know (by being taught or by personal experience) how their bodies naturally behave.

At one point in the evening, Sue suggested that if people had questions, they should visit her website. She said to ignore the beginning of her website because that was about her and why would we care about that? Regardless of her modesty, I’m tremendously curious about Sue and how she came to be such an open expert on sex. During her presentation, she mentioned (and demonstrated!) that she had had to teach young people who’d been forced into prostitution how to put a condom on a man using only their mouths. The johns of these prostitutes would insist that they perform unprotected oral sex on them. By learning how to put a condom on in this way, they could stay safe and the johns would remain unaware of what had happened until the act was done.

Both the presentation and Sue herself made for a fascinating evening.

Like Mary Warner

This is weird in an incredibly surreal way. I have a Google Alert on my name, not only to see which things I post online show up through the service, but to see who the other Mary Warners are in the world. There are a lot of them. Today, the Google Alert I got was for a Wikipedia article on a song called “Like Mary Warner” by the all-female Russian pop group Serebro. The song is also called “Sweet.” Of course, I had to have a listen on YouTube. This is the English version. This is the Russian version. It’s rather catchy no matter which way you have a listen.

Hubby is pretty sure the song is referencing marijuana, because Mary Warner is a slang term for the wacky weed.

The Most Natural Thing on Earth

Here’s one for the annals of either hilarious or over-stated advertising. Hubby found this box of instant oatmeal while grocery shopping tonight.

Great Value Apples & Cinnamon Instant Oatmeal

If you read it closely, perhaps you’ll see what Hubby saw.

Read the line directly under "Instant Oatmeal."

“Natural flavors with other natural flavors.”

Of course!  Why not put natural flavors with other natural flavors?

Can advertising get much sillier?

Holding Chopsticks for Clare

Author Clare Dudman is planning a trip to China. In preparation for her trip, she is learning how to hold chopsticks, but is having a bit of difficulty in maneuvering them so that she can pick up food and not have aching fingers. It took me a considerable amount of time to find a workable technique. Young Son was a total natural at chopsticks pretty early because he was fascinated with Asian culture. He  has a beautiful chopstick collection. After watching him and getting tips from my sister-in-law, who used to live in Hawaii (chopsticks are big there), I finally got the hang of it.

I tried to explain to Clare in her comment section how I hold chopsticks, but I really wanted to show her pictures because explaining is just too hard. So, Clare, for you …

Holding chopsticks.

Move only the top chopstick with the forefinger. Keep bottom one stationary. The thumb keeps everything steady.

It gets easier the more you practice, but do keep a spork handy, Clare!

If you really need it, you could get a tattoo of chopsticks handling instructions. (Thank my darling Hubby for that advice & for finding the link. )

The Story of a Deleted Blog

I deleted a blog today. With only a smidge of trepidation.

I’ve been working on a story idea, one for which I have a fair number of notes, but not much writing. At a certain point in the creation process, I thought it would be a good idea to structure the story as a blog. I was pretty sure the story would work in first-person point-of-view and I wanted it to be informally told. I also figured that if I set up an actual blog for the story that I’d get hopping on content generation, rather than all this thinking & note-taking, because I always manage to find time to write posts for The Woo Woo Teacup Journal.

So, I set up a new blog at the end of August. And it sat. I’d open my WordPress account and see 2 Dashboards and feel guilty that I wasn’t working on the new blog, which meant that I wasn’t generating material for the story. Last Monday, I put my butt in a chair, opened a screen for a new post on the new blog, and started writing. Over 600 words later I was out of time, but the post wasn’t done. There was more to write on the first scene.

I don’t know about you, but when it comes to blog posting for me, I have to finish a post within one or two sessions (preferably one) and if I have to save it in Draft form, by golly, I plan on finishing the post the next day. It was readily apparent that this wasn’t going to happen with the new blog. I was going to end up with week-long (or more) time lags within the space of a single post. While I can deal with lags in a word processing document, I can’t abide by them in a blog.

So, I copied the text of that unfinished blog post into a Word document and said “Buh-bye” to the new blog, holding my breath for only a moment while I clicked the link in the confirmation email. I was more worried I’d lose The Woo Woo Teacup Journal by clicking the link than I was over losing the new blog.

Fiction blogging may work for some writers, but it doesn’t work for me. And I’m okay with that.

Stranded

What a day! We spent the weekend visiting Eldest Son at college. He’s doing fine & we had fun. We left this morning to head to a meeting for Daughter and mid-way through the trip, our car hiccuped. This has happened before and the results had not been good. Hubby looked at the gauges and noticed that the temperature gauge was in the hot zone. Our car was over-heating. Seriously over-heating.

We were on the Interstate and our car died. Hubby coasted it as far as he could, but we ended up in what felt like the middle of nowhere. It may as well have been the middle of nowhere because, for all the traffic that whizzed by us, no one, NOT EVEN THE HIGHWAY PATROL, stopped for us. (We have to wonder what the Highway Patrol is for if not to assist stranded motorists. Are they only about handing out speeding tickets?)

We got out, fearing for our lives on the side of the Interstate, and checked the engine. Coolant was leaking out the bottom and the engine was so hot that any attempt to put in the extra coolant we had resulted in a lot of spitting. (Yes, we did wait some time for the engine to cool before refilling the coolant, but the thing was so hot that no amount of time seemed sufficient.)

Thankfully, we had the cell phone so we could call relatives for help. Hubby’s parents agreed to come get us and our brother-in-law gave us numbers for the nearest towing services. Because it was Sunday, the first two we called were closed. (Because we all know that the only time a car needs towing is during regular business hours.) The third place we called sent a nice young man out immediately.

Because of where we were (the middle of nowhere), we had quite a bit of time to wait for the parental units and the tow truck. In the meantime, I seriously had to pee, as did Hubby and Young Son. There’s nothing like having to pee in a ditch while trying not to be seen by passing traffic. Thank God for tall, thick weeds! Peeing outside is not the easiest thing to do if you’re female, but I was pleased with the fact that I managed not to pee on my shoes or clothing. Having one need successfully met under trying circumstances makes the rest of the situation more bearable.

While we continued to wait, Young Son discovered milkweed at the side of the road and had fun disecting it. Daughter practiced her flute in the car, which she thought was hilarious given the circumstances. We thought it would be even more hilarious had she gotten out and played on the side of the road. Maybe someone would have stopped. All in all, a science lesson and a music lesson, along with a lesson in what to do while stranded, made the two hours we spent on the Interstate marginally productive.

The tow truck reached us about fifteen minutes before Hubby’s parents. The tow truck driver got the car hooked up and then waited with us until Hubby’s parents arrived. He didn’t want to leave us waiting on the side of the road. (Which was incredibly nice of him. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr. Tow Truck Man!)

Hubby rode in the tow truck while our car was delivered to a garage for repair. (It’s Sunday, so the place wasn’t open, which means we’ll be dealing with this tomorrow.) The rest of us followed in Hubby’s parents’ car. When we got to the garage, we shifted the luggage from our car to the parental units’ car, then all crammed in and headed home.

My head was throbbing from all the travel and stress, so after greeting the kitties, I collapsed for a two-hour nap. It’s nice to be home.

Butterfly or Moth?

What is it?

The above creature hitched a ride in the laundry basket when Daughter & Young Son brought in clothes off the line. Apparently, prior to this one flapping out (flapped like a bat it was so big) while I was folding clothes, the children had battled to get another one just like it out of the house. That one, too, managed to come in during the laundry-retrieving exercise.

We can’t tell whether this is a moth or a butterfly. Hubby did a little online research this morning to see if he could identify it, but had no luck. So, then, we leave this to you, Dear Reader. Can you identify this?

Btw, Hubby caught the one you see in the photo in a bucket and I took it outside to let it go.