Writing In Spite of Everything

Posted on August 7, 2024 by McPhedran

I gleaned a couple of basics from Anne Lamont’s book of writing advice, Bird for Bird. First and foremost, writing “is a matter of persistence and faith and hard work.” (7)

She also goes on to state that many readers “buy into the simplistic concepts of character and plot because it is much easier to embrace absolutes than to suffer reality, as reality is unforgivingly complex.” (104)

These two essential ideas aside, she does miss how the nucleus of the process is in the marvel of entering another realm, knowing something there and chittering at the edge of that, loving the moment for as long as it might last.

In other words, it’s essentially about having the etching tools and a place to set up.

Anything But What I Have To Write

Posted on August 1, 2024 by McPhedran

I will clean and organize. I will rearrange again. I will watch the cows intently and see if they are grazing or lying down. I will think about what it must be like to have only those choices. I will clean and organize again.

I will look at the clouds and seek out brightness on the horizon. I will plan the rest of my day and the days to come. I will think of what it is I must do except for the thing I must do.

I will write other things. I will work on bits of dialogue. I will outline a new idea. I will edit that. I will write this thing. I will do anything if it’s to keep me from the thing I know I have to do.

And then I will strike in a moment! My confidence will be true. But brief. I will look at the cows again. I will organize again. I will realize all of the things I could have done if I had only known better. I will realize I am too tired to get it into now and wait for the coming day.

I will be fresh then. I will be ready to really go at it. Of that I am certain.

Down Goes Alice Munroe

Posted on July 31, 2024 by McPhedran

Canada’s Nobel Laureate author Alice Munroe is now being judged for her complicity in her second husband sexual abuse of her then 9-year-old daughter. “There’s some things I just think it’s better not to talk about, don’t you?” (Rich as Stink)

Munroe’s short story collection The Love of a Good Woman collection offers compelling prose and narrative choices along with confounding character psyches that cannot be ignored in light of these revelations. “Her whole life was liable to be seen as some sort of unseemly thrashing around, a radical mistake.” (Save the Reaper)

Society tends towards judgement, which of course is not the purpose of writing and certainly not Munroe’s fictional world. “You can’t take your attention from the tempest or it will rip open your last defenses. You try for sanity’s sake to fix on some calm detail of your surroundings, but the wind’s cries are able to inhabit a cushion or a figure in the rug or a tiny whirlpool in the window glass.” (My Mother’s Dream, 374)

Half Asleep Brain Processes

Posted on June 25, 2024 by McPhedran

I think I’m awake but not, because I’m thinking things like I’m late for my aunt’s funeral and that I should learn to play piano. I need someone to roll down the window or a Christmas tree, something like that.

I’m bendable or half inflated, a combination of velvet and sticks. I can’t remember. I’m dropping stuff and spilling ice, hitting the call button on the broken PA, and then I’m writing out restaurant recs, and Marcus Aurelius comes to mind, a hose or at least parts of one.

I want to remind myself of the thing I need to remember. One of those new water bottles that everybody has. That’s what I need and how much that actually make sense. I’m processing what makes fashion. If it’s insanity, what then?

Roadkill in “The Grapes of Wrath”

Posted on June 19, 2024 by McPhedran

Bleakness and death permeate John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, even in the seemingly minor descriptions of going down that barren road. As the truck came near, the driver saw the turtle and swerved to hit it. His front wheel struck the edge of the edge of the shell, flipped the turtle like a tiddlywink, spun it like a coin, and rolled it off the highway. (15)

The rabbit hesitated, faltered and then turned and bolted towards the lesser lights of the Dodge. There was a soft jolt as he went under the wheels “We sure squashed him,” said Casy. (185)

A rattlesnake crawled across the road and Tom hit it and broke it and left it squirming. (230)

Questions On Our Existence

Posted on June 6, 2024 by McPhedran

Do I want to know when and where I will die? Hell no! But…a ‘yes’ means that there’s more to what I think I know. And so…yes?

When you order “Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “Chungking Express”, Amazon recommends a spanking video. (Should I put it on my list?)

I’ve got one for whoever is in charge of this mess: Are humans a successful step in evolution? Yes or no. No waffling. (Uh…no.)

Listening and Not

Posted on April 3, 2024 by McPhedran

I woke the moment you leaned. You listened. That’s what you said. You knew I was lost and found something in that. You had been where I had. Mine was yours. And then it was gone.

You didn’t understand that my state of rest is the argumentative. That brings me peace, not being right or wrong, but that you only have to argue a little bit harder to be heard.

A Baby to Expunge

Posted on February 28, 2024 by McPhedran

As much as I love this scene, it doesn’t work for my novel, The Vanishing Pill.

Punter’s film had finally uploaded and was ready to view. It opened with Punter handing over a kilo of cocaine to the Head of School, Lilly Castor – played by the Head of the Fine Arts Department – as a bribe to not expel him. The meeting concluded with Lisa accepting the cocaine and then doing a gang handshake with Punter. The class exploded in laughter. Davis, dumbfounded, watched the following where the boys, assumedly all high on cocaine, ran around an apartment like maniacs; he abruptly stopped the film. “What the hell is this?”

“New York New Wave,” Punter proudly declared. The class laughed at that.

“This film is garbage, Punter.”

“It’s a question of taste, isn’t it?”

Davis went to Lilly’s office immediately after the class. “I just watched Punter’s film.”

She had disconcertingly wide eyes and a tight fat mouth. “Our meeting isn’t until tomorrow.”

“Lilly, I just saw his film where you play the head of school.”

She turned her rolling chair half toward him. “He certainly put a lot of time into that. He’s such a dedicated to film-making.”

“Lilly…” Davis made a series of gestures, unable to say what he wanted to say. “The opening scene is of you accepting a kilo of cocaine and then doing a gang handshake.”

“He told me that it was going to be a morality tale,” Lilly explained.

“It only gets worse from there,” Davis replied. “They pile the cocaine on a table and run insanely around the apartment. They students were stunned.”

“You didn’t preview the film before showing it to the class?”

“The opening shot was of you taking a kilo of cocaine from one of our students.”

She stood up quickly. “I don’t like how you’re speaking to me, Davis.”

“How I’m speaking to you?” Davis made a half back step into the hallway and then back into the office. “Lilly, do you understand that right now every one of those kids is telling the story of that film to everyone else in the school?”

Her cheeks and chest flushed a heavy red. “Davis, you need to leave my office. Our meeting is tomorrow.”

Pre-Teen Book Shelf

Posted on February 23, 2024 by McPhedran

When I was a kid, I had a long low book shelf crowded with souvenirs, magazines and books. My souvenir shell frog from Florida was a favorite as was a wooden bear toy my parents brought back from Russia. And of course I had the ubiquitous giant eraser.

I was just beginning to grow my book collection, including Treasure Island, Sterling North’s Rascal and a book about Red-Tailed Hawks.

More than anything, I was into nature magazines, especially National & International Wildlife. I’d decided that I was going to work with animals, maybe be a zookeeper, and was determined to read every article in every issue to start my zoology education. But then I lost my focus and realized these magazines were a good hiding place for a new interest I had begun to develop.