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The Grey Suitcase: My graduation from the grey suitcase to the black one. |
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Several years back I stood in an airport line to pick up a reserved ticket. This was my second airplane trip in many years. Stoked, I could barely contain my excitement, I didn’t know quite what to expect. However, in the next ten minutes I noticed something that immediately separated me from an entire airport filled with people. I nearly dove into my bulging suitcase. I was devastated, but I was also in public. It seemed all eyes were on me. I returned the mother of glares that should have abashed, but it didn’t in the least. That’s when I pulled out the Internet copy of my airplane reservation and read it again. I stuck out like a boil on a witch’s snout. I was some kind of exchange student on Mars, misplaced. So, I did what any red-blooded American would do. Standing tall and rigid with my proud face on, I turned my thoughts to a stoic axiom: Never let them see you sweat. I pretended as if I were the only one in the queue, well, the mouthy tween a few rows over and myself. The judgmental crowd had to accept me, as a novelty, granted, but no more differently than a kid amongst midgets. I tromped along in traffic, totally besides myself. By now, only a few untrained people gawked. The drama was just getting started, but if I could make it through the line, I could hide out easily. The row inched forward and rather than trudging a few steps at a time, I allowed the line to advance significantly before taking up my next position. The idea was to draw attention away from me. After holding up it up three times, this turned out to be a bad idea. The catcalls of disapproval that ensued, was more than I could bear. It couldn’t get any worse. Eventually I rounded the corner and advanced to the next row. I reviewed my Internet ticket for the ten thousandth time, and opted to memorize the words. I had dropped my proud demeanor several rows back and settled into an apologetic smirk. As I advanced further in the queue, I found myself aligned with a bothered mother in the last row leading to the ticket booth. Two small children played at her feet, and her tween talked aloud to herself. I figured the mother was just as humiliated as I was, so I offered camaraderie through my smile. The woman did not smile back. She gazed fixedly at my person, as if I were some dated old-timer. My eyes dropped, and at that point, I memorized the small print of my ticket. The tween stopped talking; I could hear her mouth flap shut. She punched her mother as she glared at me, and asked, “Ma, what’s that?” I heard her wrist snap in the air as she pointed. The mother eyeballed me and said, “Oh, that’s an old fashioned suitcase from back in the day.” ******* That’s pretty much how I’ve been feeling about lugging around the grey suitcase icon for nearly 2 weeks. For some reason I couldn’t write. Now that I’ve finally posted my first journal entry, I realize that I was just lazy … I mean writing, rewriting and editing takes hours. Having jumped in, and based on my initial outline – I’ve got lots more to say. I want to thank my fellow inmates from the chat room for all the moral support patiently eked out of them between the hours of 2 – 7 AM earlier in the wee. |
| While reading several Blogs and commenting, I found a Contest that I’m quite interested in, they’re even giving away 15,000 GPS. That certainly got my interest. The contest is in recognition of WdC’s fifteenth birthday and it features the writing of in depth reviews. OK, I can do that, I often give in depth reviews. There’s another aspect of the contest that really got my eye and that is, I would be given an in depth review of a writing piece of my choice. I just finished my first short story but I’m hesitant of posting it just yet. You see, it’s not quite ready. It’s a story, a sort of weird love story. I’ve pained over many of the words, making sure that they expressed exactly what I meant. The story seems to flow, and I have to recheck it, but I think each sentence leads into the next. There’s a beginning and an ending, and the prose itself is decent. But it lacks the soul I require, this may be in part due to the PoV I’ve chosen. It’s still not ready and needs work. Let’s examine one of my paragraphs: Miss Nadine, holding her breath, waited until he sat before placing her tray before her. He divided the food onto thick paper plates, smiling when he was done. Her hunger, having returned, suffered through his prayer as she ogled the fat pieces of chicken that promised juicy mouthfuls of spicy, old-fashioned crispiness. When he was done, she gurgled as she muttered her “Amen.” Hmmm, I can see a problem. It is in the first sentence: Miss Nadine, holding her breath. The issue is, the PoV I’ve chosen to write in is third person omniscient, and in third person, writing should be in the past tense, it’s difficult to sustain the present tense, and if defies the rules. Third person is about he, she, and it. Present tense is awkward and, as you can see, and not consistent. Miss Nadine held her breath and waited … Better. The rest of the sentence goes like this, “waited until he sat before placing her tray before her.” I think I can do better than that, and if I “show” this action, it will come across clearer. I can’t believe that I used the preposition “before” twice, but I can fix that. Miss Nadine is holding her breath, therefore, this suggest she is hoping he doesn’t drop something, or perhaps maybe she is concerned about his weight, maybe what he sits on is wobbly. Whatever, as I write the sentence I’m sure to want to justify “holding her breath.” How do I do this? I think about what I know. I know this character “Uncle Mason,” to be a bit of a klutz, gangly. Based on his description, gangly, it means, tall, thin and awkward, I now know that Miss Nadine isn’t worried about his weight, and gangly enables me to come up with some fairly good descriptions of how he sat. So, I visualize sitting and I’ve come up with: Sitting with all legs, like a spider, knees jutting out, dropping, drooping, lowering … you get my gist? I don’t know why I didn’t see this in the first of the few rewrites, but then rewriting is about finding awkward stuff. The following is what I’ll tentatively go with: Miss Nadine held her breath and waited as Uncle Mason drooped , languid in movement into a pile of bones and jutting knees. I left out the tray, I’m not sure if I want to bring it back or not. I’ve also named the other character, Uncle Mason. I’ve drooped him in the chair because it makes me think of marionettes, I’ve described his movement as languid, and I’ve told how he falls. I’ve also juxtaposed bones and knees; I think that there are enough differences in these body parts to do so. Can you see this? I think I will bring back the tray; I want to keep the steps in order. She then dragged the spare tray near her lap, easing a foot between the legs to steady it. One of the things I don’t like to do when writing is to detail steps, more specifically, give direction as in: She pulled out her right hand and crossed it over her left side – ew, boring, and awful. In the above sentence, I’ve brought back the tray and I positioned it. This denotes the size of Miss Nadine, a far larger woman than one who could sit comfortably with two legs under the tray. She isn’t able to bring it quite to her lap, she’ll have to bend forward to eat. After she does this, what else does she do? Uncle Mason, she observed, divided the food with quick measured movements, thunking it onto thick paper plates. I chose to have her observe.. This has to come to an end, and I end it with what he does and I finalize it. He smiled when he had finished and picked up his fork. This works. Satisfied with the results she too picked up her fork and staved off her burgeoning hunger waiting on his lead. Mouth salivating, she was ready to go but Uncle Mason closed his eyes and lowered his head. The aroma of fine fried chicken whiffed through the air right under her nose and she suffered through his prayer while ogling the fat pieces of chicken that promised juicy mouthfuls of spicy, old-fashioned crispiness. After the prayer, she gurgled a modest “Amen.” I kept most of what I had written, I’m trying to convey her hunger. This paragraph is longer than the original but it says more of what I want it to say. I already know that I’ll be revising it. Even after I placed it here, I went back and changed words. I’ve had used the word “pile” twice, I don’t want that, so I changed what his falling into the chair is like, he fell into a pile, and what the food he dumped onto the plate resulted in, he filed food on the plate. Words I’m looking for to replace pile should be simple: chunk, hunk, lump, mass, stack, gob, and I see that most of these words will describe the situation of the food on the plate. Uncle Mason, she observed, busied himself with dividing the food with quick precision, thunking it onto thick paper plates in measured gobs. I changed piles to gobs and that sounds like a lot of food to me. This also attest to size, we know he is lanky, I’ve said as much, and she has to be of substantial size. There is more work to do, I thought I was finished, but since I decided to sleep on my work before posting, the errors are jumping out. |
| Starting a new chapter in our lives is a beginning like no other beginnings. Waking up in the morning, Sundays, Mondays, the first of the month, and the New Year, are beginnings that have their traditional startups and faithful adherence. These “start” and “stop” type beginnings repeat themselves and we’ve grown to expect them. As long as the natural flow of living is taking place, we can feasibly start over with a new perspective, intent, or desire to change at the forefront of each new beginning cycle. Starting a new chapter in life differs from the traditional beginnings by presentation. Cycles such as morning, week, or month occur systematically launching a new beginning that we expect and can plan for. We can pick up where we left off with new beginnings, but chapters have the uncanny knack of just happening. We can expect to have a rather smooth transition from hour to hour, day to day, or month to month without pivoting head first into total, utter change. Should that happen, then we’ve just entered a new chapter. New chapters can pick us up and dump us anywhere. Denoted by suddenness, they are fraught with the unfamiliarity, and characterized by change. Conversely, a new chapter may burst with positivity - the beginning of good things and having a whirlwind effect that defies the mundane. Such sagas of duration leave one feeling quite blissed and blessed. Most often, though, the next chapter tests our ability to “do,’ do what we got to do. If life akin to a book, a question asked might be, will I read the book of my life? If the answer is no, then simply consider that our lives are not just drama, but also a collection of genres. We’ve lived comedy, romance, soaps, fantasy, adventure, crime, mystery, and satire - a menagerie of words. Life sections chapters permeates them with color, gluts them with emotion and they are brimming with variety resulting in a book that comprises - us. We cannot know what the remaining chapters foretell because change is a given and if embraced we are able to coauthor our lives. It behooves us to keep reading, even if it starts out slow, turn the page, flip to the next chapter. At least once in a lifetime, if not more, we can rewrite the chapter before it starts or finishes. Think of a reason to change, if need be, and rewrite the next chapter. We can force a chapter, it’s exciting and powerful, but the most astounding chapters are the ones that life creates. Loss tends to truncate an existing chapter hurling us into a new event that triggers a fast curve towards calamity, the pang of existence threatens, but creative survival techniques dodge, lest one is wholly consumed. Sometimes parting is so difficult that we can’t control the grief. We must not tarry, then, for this is but a chapter and not the book. New chapters tend to let go of the recent past and set us on a path that requires focusing that the past cannot afford. Oftentimes before we start a new chapter there is a prologue, the lull of information that provides insight. This is a period of anticipation filled with either apprehension, high hopes, or determined calm. We can prepare for a new chapter in our lives with the advent of reprieve, the prologue. Therefore, the prologue is an advantageous position to be in, especially if the new chapter is gleaned to be somewhat negative or scary. Being in a predicament and knowing change is a-coming allows us to position ourselves prominently to manipulate the outcome. This begs the assistance of effort, perseverance and determination, but they’re generally at our beck and call. The chapter preceded by a prologue promises nothing but change. Change isn’t part of the process it is the process. Growth is impossible without change, and most of us don’t like doing things that allow us to float and not rise, but we do it anyway – that’s moving. Moving is going somewhere. Somewhere is away from the negative place we may find ourselves temporarily. We need to a moment to prepare for the positive while muddling through the prologue. If our life’s book has been good and filled with variety, ups and downs, setbacks, forward bursts, stagnation, progress, success and moments of sheer flying, then expect the next chapter to be great. If the prologue is iffy, endeavor to change whatever, that is, do all that you can do, because that’s all you can do. Chances are you’ll run right smack into your life’s plot, right there in the midst of the chapter. Find good in the chapter, after all, it’s your life, and that’s everything. Pay attention to your life, and no matter what, never put your book down. Keep living your life, keep reading about it, journal it, make changes, keep turning the pages. Expect change, for life is a series of chapters. Chapter |
| In my opinion, beginning a writing session at any point during the day, ranks right up there with settling down to watching a good movie, or anticipating an outing for the purpose of fun. I love anticipating a bout of writing when I’m having that kind of day. Currently, I tend to segue in writing as I complete domestic chores and other activities. It makes for a longer day, granted, but I’m able to get a variety of things done. I’m of a mind that no day must pass without writing. So if writing means, wash the dishes, then write, put a load in the laundry, then write, I am all for it. This isn’t something that I recommend, simply because what works for me, may not work for others. But for those who struggle to find time to write, I’m a big supporter of cheating time. The best way to find time to steal in order to write is by cheating time. Cheating time has two requirements. Number one, you have to carry a memo pad and pencil around with you, and number two, you must insist on the time needed to jot down short notes. Cheating time, unlike taking time out, allows you to conduct any activity at any point during a day, and taking a “visible” break. Cheating time is akin to activities such as going to the bathroom, having a coughing fit, looking for something, or letting someone else talk – these activities can be without interruption. Cheating time is simply taking time out to jot down a note, or two on any subject: a “to do”, a reminder, thought, or opening sentence, and then immediately resuming the activity at hand. The ferocity of your writing will determine if this is right for you. Finding time is a lot easier than cheating time, I find time while riding the bus, waiting in line, other waiting, the first thing I do upon awakening, in the bathroom, or when I’m supposed to be tuning into something else. Because there is so much more involved in writing than mere writing, I take advantage of most opportunities to either prepare, or write, cheating or otherwise when I’m in a writing spree. I try to account for every minute when I’m pressed for time and when time is not forgiving. Those that compartmentalize may understand the gist. Designating time is not an option, but a requisite and planning for writing is paramount, it is the bee’s knees. Simply put. I never write because I’m bored, or guilty, or find myself with extra time. I steal it, plan it, look forward to it, preferably making it part of my daily routine. Just as sure as I’m going to cook dinner and eat, address hygiene, go to work, commute, I expect a few hours of writing. Writing is my life; it is an ache. |
| This entry is a test and will eventually go away. |
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