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782. webfeet - 1/22/2008 5:31:58 AM Well, no.
But I do see an amuse bûche about a coureur du jupon who was once a happily married vegetarian living in a pasture? Something like that?
Only you can define the theme, but you might not know what it is until you start writing. You're not just going to find it out in the mulberry bush. It's probably better to go into it not knowing; otherwise, it's likeyou're writing a third grade book report, and you have this assignment hanging over your head: what's my theme?
I would start out by making a sketch of three disparate women you've dated, either recently or in the past. Really sit there and take out the charcoal and let your thoughts wander a little, without purpose as you contour their form, letting memory work itself upon your canvas. And then you'll find a theme within yourself.
Or, start with something painfully funny, a sex scene, perhaps, and work it backward.
783. judithathome - 1/22/2008 9:23:08 AM It shouldn't be so difficult to write...just start out and let it flow. You needn't worry about or follow the rules. The thing is, get it started and go from there.
These days, writing doesn't even need to make sense...collect a bunch of short pieces and call it something and you're good to go. Doesn't meed to be true or real or even literate.
The secret is to get Oprah interested. ;-) 784. webfeet - 1/22/2008 5:05:33 PM If you have such a dim view of the literary world, you're either not reading in the right places or reading at all. 785. judithathome - 1/22/2008 5:38:33 PM I see you skipped humor in your studies.
Jesus, can't anyone take a joke?
I am reading in the correct places, trust me...I read YOUR stuff, didn't I? :-)
That smiley face denotes humor...guess I should have used a few of them earlier.
Webfeet, I don't know where we got off on the wrong foot but I read AND write, also...I know about how difficult it is to come up with ideas and I know about story cards and outlines and "flow" and plot and all that sort of thing. So there is no need to insult me just because you didn't get that I was making a joke. I suspect others who write (even simply to entertain themsleves) got it. The Oprah remark should have tipped my hand.
From now on, I'll warn of jokes to follow so you'll not think me such a prig. 786. Jenerator - 1/24/2008 9:24:28 PM Webfeet!!!!
Promise us you will let us know as soon as you are published!?
Love,
Your Number One Fan 787. NuPlanetOne - 1/24/2008 9:29:12 PM Well, yes, there is the plot thing Web. And your suggestions do match that little voice near the back of my brain that continually asks ‘where am I going with this.’ The fact is I really do not have a plot in mind as yet, but your castigation is accepted and to the point. (Although I could use your lucidity and decisiveness which resonates when your prose is tooled toward critique.) Here again I respect your advice because you cut right to the heart of the exercise. I do have to start connecting a few dots. And I will have to sacrifice either Sofina or Tony’s girlfriend and decide which or the other will be the eventual Heroine. As for the sex scene, and in light of the fact that I am crafting on the fly, I feel I must include it even if I am still naïve about the graphic aspect of it, so I will rewrite it and you can judge the contrast. Now, concerning the food writing, that is in fact my goal. I deliberately stopped writing Piccata because I am pretty sure about how I want it to go. Beyond that, I am blocked. So I am writing this Tony thing in between little blurts of progress on the other thing. A lonely business, ha! I would suffer a continuum of opaque and deleted moments wedged between the yeasty clothes hamper and tub as the baby squirted me with her rubber ducky for the umpht-infinity infected time than stare hopelessly and alone at an unfinished sentence I can’t complete in my quest for a plot. Yes, I feel you on that description. Though, thank God, as it were, for the wonderful moments, lonely though they are as well, when the writing is fun. 788. NuPlanetOne - 1/24/2008 9:30:22 PM Hey Jen….thought you were my #1? 789. Jenerator - 1/24/2008 9:33:04 PM P.s. the last time we interacted (I think), I was pregnant. Here she is, Miss Precocious, age 2!
 790. Jenerator - 1/24/2008 9:33:39 PM Nu,
I am your number one fan as well!! I can love two of you, ya know!
:-)
How are you? 791. NuPlanetOne - 1/24/2008 9:36:22 PM We interacted….you got pregnant? Hmmmm……
Oh, you were pregnant already. I was going to say she could not be mine. Way too cute! Doesn’t look Italian at all.
792. Jenerator - 1/24/2008 9:38:57 PM You are Italian?! I didn't know that, do you speak Italian, too?
793. Jenerator - 1/24/2008 9:40:58 PM Here's my son Dylan (speaking if cute - he has three girls who want to "marry" him already.)
 794. NuPlanetOne - 1/24/2008 9:42:28 PM I’m half Italian. My dad was born there. I am not fluent, though I can read and write it passably. I can speak it well enough with relatives. And I am fine, these days, mostly. 795. Jenerator - 1/24/2008 9:44:05 PM We're all at home today because the little man is sick. So I cleaned out my closet and found all sorts of artifacts; at least I did something productive.
I wish I had the literary talent that you and Webfeet possess; I could have written an award-winner this month.
I will spare you the details - suffice it to say it's been one of the most emotionally weird starts to a new year. 796. alistairConnor - 1/24/2008 9:44:41 PM ah... shadows under the eyes... too many late nights drinking Dr Peppers?
And WHAT has that boy been eating... 797. NuPlanetOne - 1/24/2008 9:50:46 PM Beautiful kids Jen. Keepers both. I will say that having talent to write does little by way of making it at all easy. But you did hit on the correct notion, that is, having the time, any free time to attempt it. Bad emotional times? Sorry to hear that. I hope it clears out soon 798. webfeet - 2/14/2008 1:28:10 AM Bienvenue de la France... I am on a cold stone mountain in the alps, inside belle-mere's lair. (we're amies, at the moment). I scored a lot of pts tonight with an apple crumble..the key is crude brown sugar, or sucre roux. Maybe I can bake my way into the family's affections..
IN order of posts, Judith, if you knew how much work and obsessive re-writing I do, a casual remark such as your own, is enough to send me raking through the drawrs to find the key to the rifle cabinet. At the moment, I'm only hunting rabbits now..and other game from my perch in the attic.
Jen, I was delighted to hear from you. It seems like--yesterday that we trucked through 'Black Swan Green.' ANd, thank you. It was very nice to read that, now, as I am having a really blue day concerning my work. It's funny how kind words have a way of popping up when you need them.
To read someone who is a genuine literary talent, however, pick up "A Charmed Life: Growing up in Macbeth's Castle" by Liza Campbell, the daughter of the 25th Thane of Cawdor. It's an astonishing work, not just because the writing is brilliant, but the nature of the story, of a childhood that is far from a fairy tale, is so sad and yet so compelling to read.
It's not about a thirteen year old boy with a speech impediment.
And I love your bravado in posting photos of children (adorable ones) drinking from soda cans with lips smacking of bad-for-you blue food. I would be exiled in my neighborhood. Mothers would shun me. Actually, I love it because one of my characters does this very thing. She gives her daughter yoohoo and fritos at playgroup while the other moms unwrap organic super foods and the like in a competition for healthiest mom/tot lifestyle duo. New York mothers are hyper-conscious about snack. Snack is a snapshot of your life. What is disturbing is how mothers, at least the ones I know, prefer a snack that is air tight, sealed and factory made, (even in an organic, peanut free one) over a homemade cookie. There's this anxiety over food in general, with snack as the most obvious example of how people with too much in life can find so much to be miserable about.
Nuplanet, baths and babies, and yeasty laundry sacks take up a lot of time when you're trying to write and be creative. And, yet it's funny what we think of as 'inspiring' moments. Take now. I have a snow-peaked mountain outside my window. When I open my eyes in the morning, I have this glorious Kodak Gallery montage to wake up to. Is it inspiring? Not really. It's like looking at a picture of Keira Knightley. It's perfection. But then, so what? It's actually deadly boring. There's probably some kind of book written by Mitch Alboun like "More Pearls of Wisdom From Maurrie" that offers these little gems, like finding inspiration in small things, that says the same thing with bon bon simplicity, but it is true. 799. wonkers2 - 2/14/2008 2:01:14 AM Jen, beautiful children! 800. NuPlanetOne - 2/14/2008 2:53:08 AM Web,
This much I am certain of, waking up *with* Keira is a thought I find inspiring. I would forgo views of all sorts, perhaps windows altogether. Yet, I am a lover of mountain scenery and morning mist, so I envy you that. But yes, inspiration, however small or truly simple, is difficult to contrive or concoct. I remember being inspired once by a bug on a box whilst sitting next to a dumpster outside a kitchen door. I scrambled to find a scrap of paper to jot down a few lines. I remember thinking at the time how that one little rush or glimpse stimulated a series of days when words and images flowed freely. It would be sweet if such a nudge were to coincide with a panoramic view, coincidently, as it were.
801. alistairconnor - 2/14/2008 11:33:01 AM Knightley? I think not.
But three times a week, for example...
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