Who goes there? Please leave comments so (An Aries Knows)!
Because I’ve started a new book in the Neverending Saga, I’m either writing or thinking a lot about writing and dashing off fragments of stuff so that I won’t lose it. That’s why there’ll probably be more posts like this, where someone else has done the thinking for me for stuff to put on my blog. =) This is a time for putting most of my creative energy into fiction.
ETA: I forgot buttons!
ALSO: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARIKA! Enjoy your lioning whatever you do.
I think I’ve shown this book on here before and even said something along the lines of how I could show the prompt from a page, but probably not what I wrote because it would likely be too personal. I might be imagining that, however.
Previously, I’d completed only one of the prompts and in fact, it was too personal to blog. Decided to try again, and here’s the result.
This was advice I received in the 20th century, so I think it’s safe to bring it up now.
The month hasn’t ended, but I need to get back to my own novels, so I probably won’t be reading anything else before August.
In July, I read Transient Desires, the 30th novel in Donna Leon’s Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery series that she began writing in 1992. I think there’s only one more unpublished that I haven’t read, but I hope there will be many more.
Princess Patti recommended this Deborah Harkness All Souls series to me. I downloaded the first book and couldn’t stop reading. There were several times when I thought the book was ending and it didn’t, and I was shocked when I finished it to realize it was 830 pages. Man, this makes me feel like my own series novels are novellas. I’ll definitely continue reading the series.
ETA: Okay, sooner than I expected, I had to read the second in this series. I have no self-discipline at all. Blame the witches. The vampires. The daemons. The chance to meet great historical and literary figures of the past through the eyes of time travelers from the 21st century. This world of fiction is no more unbelievable than the world we’re living in, and it’s not nearly as hard on my nervous system.
Finished off the month with non-fiction. From the first time I heard his music and started reading about him (in his interviews, in others’ assessments of him), John Mellencamp’s contradictory nature intrigued me. Paul Rees’s biography gave me new information, particularly about the paintings he creates, but also about some of his collaborations through the years. He remains one of my favorite singer/songwriters. His songs are often misappropriated for uses far afield of what he intended, much like Bruce Springsteen’s, i.e., people take a catchy line or chorus and turn it into political jingoism that’s the exact opposite of a song’s meaning, playing songs at rallies and earning themselves big ol’ cease and desist orders.
Woody Guthrie once painted “This machine kills fascists” onto his guitar, and John Mellencamp carved “Fuck Fascism” into one of his. They meant it. Art has many functions, but among the best are its ability to challenge us.
I think I’ve shared this favorite C.F. Payne Rolling Stone illustration a couple of times on this blog, but since I can’t seem to pull it up, I’ll do it again. “Mr Guthrie’s Homeroom” has Woody Guthrie looking on while Minnesota student Bob Dylan writes. On his right, New Jersey student Bruce Springsteen is trying to see Bob’s paper, while Indiana student John Mellencamp peers over Bruce’s shoulder. This has hung in one room or another of my houses forever. I like to think that coming through the window on the breeze, teacher and students can hear the guitar and lyrics of Illinois’s son John Prine as he sings and plays for coins and occasional dollar bills tossed into his guitar case.
All that in mind, passages from this book from Woody Guthrie’s daughter, as well as accounts of how Dylan, Springsteen, Mellencamp, Johnny Cash, and Tom Petty, for example, regard(ed) one another, are riveting reading for me. I’d started composing this post before I finished the book, adding my own contribution with that reference to John Prine (above). It was a bittersweet surprise, then, near the end of the biography, which encompasses the pandemic, to read this:
On Tuesday, April 7 [2020], John Prine, another comrade troubadour, died at seventy-three in a hospital in Tennesee. John posted a tribute to Prine on his website the next morning.
“Losing John Prine is like losing Moses,” John wrote. “He stood on top of the hill and gave us words of wisdom and truth. John Prine and I wrote songs together and made a movie together. We laughed together, and he spent many a lost weekend at my house. John Prine’s name is written in the stars.”
In my view of the galaxy, all their names are written in the stars.
Back in March, just before my birthday, I posted a photo of a wee, rusted iron skillet that once was used as an ashtray by my parents. I included a snap from social media with this fun information about the proper care of an iron skillet:
Just after that, I received a different kind of iron skillet from Timothy for my birthday.
A wee iron guitar! Though I have to say, I was skeptical since it included no instructions regarding riddles and blood moons.
Just for fun, I did use it in early May for baking:
Not sure who got the little piece of guitar cornbread, Tom or Tim.
It has more functionality as a spoon rest when I’m cooking in my larger cauldron iron skillet, like today for this simmering tomato sauce.
Speaking of cauldrons, I’m not currently writing. I’m staying inside, cool and calm, while falling into a new world of witches, vampires, and daemons thanks to the first book in a series Princess Patti recommended. More on that as the month ends.
You don’t have to put it in the comments, though it would be fun if you did. But this writing prompt is for you. One thing that is written into the Neverending Saga has to do with elderly people and what they bring to the lives of the characters. I can’t imagine my own life without the seniors I’ve known and how they graced, entertained, enhanced, and touched my life. The best of them were also a little unpredictable and still very young inside.
Do with this what you will, you and Mr. Stanley.
This whole thing started for me this morning when I shot this photo while thinking of one of my characters. Maybe the photo can also be part of your completing this prompt. CREATE!
I’ve learned that some people like reading fiction best when they find themselves in it. I guess it’s not so different from how we tend to view most things: through a lens etched with our own experiences and beliefs. I can do it, too–comparing a character’s behavior and life to my own.
More enjoyable for me is fiction where events, circumstances, and characters slip loose from the moorings of ME ME ME and provide a new world for me to consider. I don’t care if *I* wouldn’t do that…make that choice…make that mistake…pick that route/person/job/place. It’s a lot more fun for me to think *Why* is s/he doing that, what will happen because of it, what will the character learn, how will it impact the story/other characters/how will all this ever be resolved?
Novels written by someone who has any fame/notoriety/celebrity often fall prey to the belief that they are memoir or autobiography disguised as fiction. Their authors occasionally admit when there is some truth to that. Maybe it’s part of selling books, making readers wonder which parts are true, which characters are based on whom? Even with those books, I enjoy them most when I let go of that perspective.
Fiction allows liberties–and liberation!
I like this quote from Carrie Fisher’s Postcards From The Edge. I’m content for it to be neither about me nor about Carrie Fisher, simply about the character Suzanne Vale.
She wanted so to be tranquil, to be someone who took walks in the late-afternoon sun, listening to the birds and crickets and feeling the whole world breathe. Instead, she lived in her head like a madwoman locked in a tower, hearing the wind howling through her hair and waiting for someone to come and rescue her from feeling things so deeply that her bones burned. She had plenty of evidence that she had a good life. She just couldn’t feel the life she saw she had. It was as though she had cancer of the perspective.
Sometimes I think of sending postcards to myself as if they’re from other writers’ characters offering wit and wisdom. Sometimes I feel like my own characters send me mental postcards saying, No I would not do this. YOU would do this maybe, but I would not. Let me be me. Even if you don’t like it. Even if you think a reader won’t like it.
My rebellious, outspoken characters can sometimes make me feel like I’M a madwoman locked in a tower. I love them for that.
My cleanup of the blog is complete, and now we (which means, mostly Tom, the tech savvy person at Houndstooth Hall) are working with a couple of companies’ technical support to resolve various issues before I take the site live again.
It’s a profound relief not to be going through hundreds of posts a day, trying to clean them up. Instead, I’ve given time to leisure activities I enjoy. I started this book yesterday. Lady of Bones is the 24th in Carolyn Haines’s Sarah Booth Delaney series, and I finished it today. Set in and around New Orleans, it’s got a bit of everything, and it was nice to catch up with the Zinnia crew again.
I’ve listened to some of my recently purchased CDs while cleaning house, cooking, and enjoying time with my dogs. Music, as the Beach Boys sing, is in my soul.
Also, I finally, finally have returned to the Neverending Saga. One of the things I discovered as I reread my entire blog was how long these characters were percolating in my brain again before I took the plunge and decided to revise and rewrite those old manuscripts in 2019. In every way, I realized that I’ve reached the phase of peace and resolution I wanted. I’m writing for me. It doesn’t matter that others have not and may not ever read what I’m writing. It doesn’t matter that people used what I’m writing to project their own challenges or miseries onto me or my work. I’ll tell the stories. I’ll tell them in ways that honor my characters and who they were created to be. That’s all I can do.
It’s nice to be with them again after more than three weeks of being denied that joy.
Here are a couple of characters who help me celebrate friendship. The dress on the left is one I made way back when, and on the right, from Mattel’s 1962 black and white floral Fashion Pak, are this blouse and skirt and included another skirt and a romper. The entire set is almost certainly from Lynne’s collection.
I don’t know how long ago Tim loaned me this book. I know it’s been at some point since 2019, when I started writing again, and I was doing a ton of research. Maybe he wanted me to get a perspective I might be missing. Maybe he wanted to give me something to laugh about.
Here’s what I knew about the Beastie Boys when I opened the cover in… April? May? That one song. You know the one. “You gotta fight for your right to parrrrrty…” And that my newphew Daniel loved them. Presumably still does. Daniel and Tim are one year apart in age and happen to be of a generation that I always found smart and creative and off beat and edgy in ways that appeal to me.
I might have heard other songs. Seen some videos. I can’t remember everything.
The book is 571 pages. In all fairness, there are a LOT of photos and a lot of lists with photo credits and an index. Still… it’s a big damn book.
I began reading it with two goals. 1. Do NOT immediately figure out which Beastie Boy is who from the pictures. Let their personalities open themselves up to you by what they write (there are only two of them who are writing it, but they write a lot about the one who died, so there’s plenty of info). 2.Do NOT listen to any of the music they talk about. Not the music they loved or the music they made or the music they sampled. Delay that gratification.
I stepped into this like I was exiting a spaceship on another planet, where I might speak the language, but I didn’t necessarily understand it.
The book turned out to be one of the most engaging and enjoyable things I’ve read in a long time. I can’t believe I finished it despite this month of turmoil (it’s not only blog turmoil, there’s a lot going on in the lives of people I know and love and in my own life). I didn’t read anything else. I didn’t color. I did do one very small painting. I cooked and cleaned and took care of my home and dogs. But mostly in this month, it was FIX BLOG; READ BEASTIE BOYS.
Now that I’ve finished it, I’ll get clear on who’s who (not just the three Beastie Boys, but others who worked with them), and I’ll listen to the music with insights I didn’t have before. I don’t know how Tim knew I would need this or that I’d finally dive into it at the time it was needed most, but that’s the magic of life and friendship. Acceptance voluntary; answers not required.
I previously posted a photo titled Old Red Truck, oil on canvas from artist Michael Meissner.
Still working on blog repair: have completed years 2004 through 2012, as well as 2017 through 2022. So only four years remain.
Below is an excerpt from a July 2012 post that drew on memories from around 1987 and inspired today’s choice of a painting.
[The truck I borrowed, Big Red] was an ancient pickup–I can’t remember if he was a Ford or a Chevy, but he was beat up as hell. He’d been part of a working ranch or farm… so he’d earned every dent, scratch, and faded bit of paint he wore. Every time I clambered into the cab, slammed the door, and cranked him up, I slipped inside the pages of a Larry McMurtry novel. And I love Larry McMurtry even more than red trucks, so I am talking BLISS.
I know that one day, somehow, another Big Red will come into my life. If he’s not pretty, I don’t care, as long as what’s under the hood will keep us on the run. And if it doesn’t happen before I check out, then I can’t think of a better way to be imagined: tooling through the universe–make me young and thin again, with long brown hair whipping around me, and all the dogs who went before me taking turns riding on the seat next to me. Whenever you’re sitting at home or inside a place of business, and you hear a bit of music as someone drives by–and if you know me, you’ll probably know what music is likeliest–then think to yourself, There goes Becky. Or, you know, Aunt Becky, Beck, Becks, Beckster, or any of the BettyPeggyBetsyDebby names I’ve been miscalled through the years. It’s all good in a red truck.