Saturday cartoon: Dusan Vukotic's uber cool "Surogat"

Just one of those trippy little things I came across in the course of research and wanted to share. In 1963, Dusan Vukotic was first non-American to win the Oscar for animated short (which they were still calling "best cartoon" back then). Freaky-deaky Picassoesque cool, "Surogat" was released in English-speaking countries as "Ersatz." Forty-five years later, the art holds up, a testament to the do-what-grooves-you school of artistic thought and the inflatible nature of life.

Exit Redbone: Every Dog Has His Day Part 1

September 4, 2008

It’s been a week since Hurricane Ike rolled over our sky-blue house in Spring, Texas, and I’m lying on the garage floor with Redbone, our beloved family dog, a senile English Springer whose twisted hillbilly lineage actually makes him his own uncle. His once-chocolate muzzle has grayed to salt and pepper; his bounding back legs have stiffened to arthritic stone. Stroking his belly, my hand travels the soft swell of a grapefruit sized lipoma, one of many benign fatty tumors that have developed on his body, as benign fatty tumors commonly do in a dog this age and a breed this inbred. I avoid the feverish spots where he’s chewed himself raw, but the sleepy weight of my hand is too much on his spavined hip, and he growls to let me know. The doggie downer Gary administered earlier has taken full effect. Redbone’s eyes are as red-rimmed and spillish as if he just stumbled out of Nine Inch Nails concert.

I make an effort to get up. That doesn’t work. Redbone licks my bloody chin. He still loves me. But I suspect that on some level he’s known all day that I was plotting to kill him.

Redbone was having a bad time even before the storm. The last few summers have been hard on him. The week since the storm has been even harder. He’s not used to being tied up, but with the fences flattened by the wind and exposed power lines in the streets, we have no choice but to tether him to one of the still-standing porch posts, where he thrashes and bays until he makes himself ill. Nothing in his staid world is as it should be since the night he shrank into a puppy again and huddled in my arms, whining at the shrill chorus of witches in the wind and the shummering vibrations of the steel playground equipment across the street. Eight days later, his expression is still shell-shocked, utterly bewildered. The electricity is still out, so there’s no AC. Redbone’s tongue lolls in the oppressive heat, drop-jawed, mouthing the humid air.

Redbone has been wildly agitated since the storm, but I didn’t decide to kill him because he bit me. He’s bitten me many times over the last six months, and we both understand that this is not his fault, that these flashes of rage and frustration are as much an embarrassment to him as the way he’s taken to yelping when he poops. The point of no return was the sight of his canine incisors, bared and scissoring like jagged-edge pinking shears about eighteen inches from the spindly, sunburned arm of Riley, the four-year-old boy who lives next door.

We’re all cooking out these days, of course, so the morning air was full of campout breakfast. Pancakes. Bacon. Greasy eggs over easy. Redbone lumbered out of the garage and loped across the lawn. I caught up with him and seized his collar just as he lunged for the plate on Riley’s plastic Little Tykes picnic table. He wheeled, snarling, and even as he sank his teeth into my wrist, his big old doggie eyes were pleading up at me. Bacon, bacon, bacon. In the name of Christ’s mother immaculate, woman, do you not smell the bacon?

“Huh,” said Riley’s father, who is a nice enough guy but about as quick on the uptake as a persistent fatty tumor. Instead of scooping Riley into his arms, he just stood there next to the barbecue grill, spatula in hand, observing the scene as if he was watching a couple of rodeo clowns. Tears of pain and heartsickness stung my eyes as I struggled my dog back to our own driveway. There was no more denying it. Redbone had punched his ticket.

I spent some time crying in the bathroom, contemplating how to get the job done. I didn’t want to talk to Gary about it. He is the Clarence Darrow of denial when it comes to this sort of thing; we traveled this same downhill slope with an old dog we adopted shortly before we were married twenty-five years ago. I couldn’t bear to be cast as the prosecutor lobbying for the death of a dog I loved against Gary’s love-means-never-having-to-face-reality defense. The phone was nonfunctional, my cell service spotty, so I couldn’t call the vet who had no power in whatever office was left anyway, so no hope of getting help or an additional supply of the pet sedatives we’d gotten before the storm, anticipating Redbone’s distress combined with the thunder-chasing hyperactivity of Manny, our Boston terrier. A few hours after the Riley incident, as I waited in the long gas line for my twenty dollars worth of strictly rationed fuel, I saw an open drug store. I found sleeping pills in aisle five. A lone jar of creamy peanut butter stranded on a picked-over shelf.

After Gary administered the doggie downers and left to put in an extra nightshift at the ravaged airport, I assembled the extra creamy death on white bread. I figured ten sleeping pills would do the trick. Then I put in ten more, just to make sure. That left only four in the packet, so I put those in as well, sprinkling the contents of each capsule on a liberally slathered slice of bread. As I spread the second slice thickly, Redbone snuffled in anticipation, wagging his sawed-off stump of tail. With a broken, guilty heart, I knelt and hugged my arms around him.

“Been a long time since you had a nutter-butter sammy, huh, Mr. Bones?”

Come to think of it, it had been a while since I’d had one myself. We’d both come to an age where diet was so much about caution and so little about pleasure. Pondering the difference between being alive and truly living, I made myself a nice thick peanut butter sandwich, too, and carried the round cutting board out to the dark garage, where the open door was full of late evening air. Redbone and I sat down and ate our sandwiches without caution, without care, relishing the rare snatches of birdsong that managed to peek through the roar of gas generators. It didn’t taste as good as I thought it would. The bread was stale, and the creamy peanut butter had an odd post-shelf-life graininess to it.

“You’re a good dog, Redbone,” I whispered, scratching behind his shaggy ear. “Thank you for being such a wonderful part of this family.”

I started crying again, remembering how I’d slept on the kitchen floor with him his first night in our home. He was four weeks old, a calendar cute puppy with enormous paws and huge, soulful eyes that reminded me of Leon Redbone. My kids had already named him “Dodger Rodgers”, so they were dismayed to discover I’d rechristened him before they got up the next morning.

“Redbone?

“Yup,” I said. “Redbone Blues Doggie. That’s his name.”

“How do you know?” said my skeptical second-grader.

“I said to him, ‘Puppy, if your name is Redbone, keep me up all night whining and then pee on my shirt.’ And he did.”

I bought a book about holistic new-age dog training. The puppy slumbered in my lap while I studied it from cover to cover. Then he peed on it.

“Redbone,” I said sternly. “You sadden me when you don’t bizzy in the bizzy place.”

The book suggested using the word bizzy because it was more easily distinguished. It also suggested expressing strong feelings and mimicking an elaborate system of behaviors designed to make him think I was his mother. After two or three weeks of rolling on the floor, barking, growling, fetching chew toys in my teeth and throttling him with my mouth on the downy scruff of his neck, I bought another book, this one written by a group of monks who train personal assistance dogs. These monks didn’t mess around with a lot of bizzy psychobabble. Puppy boot camp ensued, and within a few months, I had this dog respecting the sanctity of the upstairs carpet, walking at heel three miles every morning without a leash, and depositing his own chew toys into a plastic bin every night before bed.

“English Springers are a sociable breed,” the vet told me. “Four hundred years of hanging out with human beings. All this dog wants is to be the best friend of anyone patient enough to teach him.”

Redbone spent the next twelve years Velcroed to my side. He listened with rapt interest while I did phone interviews promoting my second novel and snoozed at my feet while I wrote my third. He gamely danced with me whenever I was fighting to stay awake and stolidly kept watch if I stretched out to nap on my office floor. When I laughed, he barked along; when I cried, he nuzzled my knees. He alerted me every afternoon when the elementary school bus arrived, rode in the back seat to pick up the kids from junior high, patiently waited for them to come home from college on the weekends.

Now we’d come to the end of our last day together. Redbone lay down on the cement floor, and I went to lie beside him, but squatting there in the dark, I suddenly felt a bit off balance. My head nodded forward, and I bumped my chin on the wooden arm of the Adirondack chair. The sharp edge and jolt to my jaw jogged something loose in the back of my brain. I touched my face, stared blankly at the blood on my fingertips, greenish black and shiny under the amber flashlight. There was a cloudiness, like sediment stirred up from the bottom of a fish tank, then a disconnected retracing of steps leading back, back, back, and then forward again to the moment when I set the two sandwiches side by side on the cutting board—as identical as two MREs in a POD—the sandwich of death on the right.

No. Left.

No.

Rewind. Play.

I watched myself eat the sleeping pill sandwich. Along with the realization came a tsunami of dizziness and nausea.

So now I’m lying on the floor with Redbone. My cell phone is in my pocket, smooth as a skipping stone and just as useful. Gary is as good as a thousand miles away. Across the street, the generators roar an ocean of sound that drowns my feeble cries for help along with the thin songs of the mockingbirds perched among the debris.

This is the end, I’m thinking.

But of course, it’s only the beginning.

Will Joni survive the Socrates sandwich of doom? Does Redbone receive a stay of execution? And what the hell does any of this have to do with writing and/or publishing? Tune in Monday for "Every Dog Has His Day: Part 2"...

Quote for an Editing Day

We had snow last night here in the Houston area. Can you believe it? Nothing but some fluffy flurries in my neighborhood, but they brought back so many wonderful memories of growing up in the Northeast. They also prompted me to light my seldom-used fireplace, which brings me to this lovely quote for my day of editing.

“You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you. And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke.”

-Arthur Polotnik

Stay warm!

One Step at a Time

Though my head's been in a new project for the past two months, I've been called upon to do some edits of the previous manuscript. This happens frequently. You'll be happily slogging away at the work in progress when another one comes home to roost for a spell like an errant, grown child.

I have this one, last chance (other than galley proofs, which allow me to change nothing but typos and the occasional glaring continuity error) to straighten this book's collar and neaten her hair before sending her out for the world to see. I'm initially daunted by my editor's list of suggestions, which will require my to reread the entire manuscript so I can be sure not to drop threads or contradict myself as I make changes.

So I trot out an old mantra used for facing edits, galleys, and at times the writing of the manuscript itself. One step at a time, it goes, meaning that it's imperative to really focus on each page separately, apart from and yet together with the totality of the book. It's my way of breaking up the task into bite-sized chunks, a hold-over from my teaching experience, which taught me (as nothing teaches one like teaching) that human beings freeze mentally when faced with an overwhelming, new expectation, that the only way to conquer it is to break it up into small steps.

I use this method to break down my deadline, planning pages to be completed per month and per day and allowing time for days off and a solid block for editing. Mini-deadlines have kept me sane in this business, and since I now have an external one (a week to turn around these edits) I'll be moving on to that task...

One step at a time, one page at a time.

By the way, this lovely photo is of the mysterious staircase of the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a place well worth visiting. To find out why it's so mysterious, check out this website.

Phil & Olly's "The Black Hole" (brevity is the soul of wit)

Colleen sent me a note: "Story-telling at its best and briefest." Followed by a link to this from Phil and Olly Future Shorts.

Begging Doctorow's Pardon, But...

"Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
E.L. Doctorow

After writing some fifteen novels using a road map (a synopsis, which is usually required to make a sale), I've taken advantage of the opportunity to fly by the seat of my pants on this one, to see if Doctorow is right.

What I've discovered is Doctorow is probably right for many novelists, but for me, the process is more akin to the disgusting business of sausage-making. There's nothing pretty about it, with a hodge podge of borrowed ingredients, revisions-on-the-fly, and bastardized reinventions of my own and others' techniques. But by the time I finish, I hope to end up with a delicious product nonetheless.

This one, it appears will involve a synopsis at some point, since I've lost my way about 25% through that dark and foggy journey.

So do you vary your tehcnique as you write, or do you pretty much have one plan that works for you and you can stick to? If so, I'll try not to hate you. I'm too busy grinding plot and characters and things I don't want to think about stuffing them inside these casings.

The day that would live in infamy lives on in librarian's letter home

A wonderful piece in this morning's Houston Chronicle: "Letter from Pearl Harbor" features US Army librarian Helene Gowan's calm account of Dec 7, 1941. I guess a librarian would know better than anyone that history requires a witness and she gives us that without embellishment, without claiming any part of the devastation that doesn't belong to her or generating any additional panic. The event is so huge, any hint of melodrama would have dishonored it. There's no bleating, no superlatives. All we need is that glimpse of the rising sun. A lesson for writers.

From Ms. Gowen's letter to her family:

About ten minutes to eight Sunday morning we were awakened by a noise of planes, and what sounded like bombing and firing - we, of course, like many others, thought it was just a practice alert. I put on my coat over my pajamas, went out to get the paper, and when I failed to discover it, stayed for a while to watch the planes which were flying very low. The Rodby boys, also pajama clad, suddenly appeared, explaining breathlessly, "Oh, Miss Gowen, this is a raid - see the rising sun on those planes, and look at the smoke over there." Just then, one dived even lower, and I could see what appeared to be a rising sun but thought it was just my imagination. Mil' looked out the window to say she was almost shaken out of her bed and she wished they wouldn't have such noisy alerts on Sunday. We decided, since we were awake, to go to nine-fifteen Mass...

(At this moment, there doesn't seem to be a link to the article on Chron.com, but I'll check back later and post it if I can.)

Beware of the Doghouse

If you want a *really* good holiday laugh, check out J.C. Penney's uber-clever video for the holiday season. For more cool, related stuff, check out BewareoftheDoghouse.com.

Though Penney's is using this hilarious send up of male gift-giving cluelessness to sell diamonds, you can check out BtO's list of great gifts for the writer in your life.

Marching Forward

I read something about the publishing biz the other day that really resonated, from "The Tao of Publishing," an article by respected literary agent Steven Axelrod and author Julie Ann Long in the December issue of The Romance Writers Report (the trade magazine of Romance Writers of America... and a very worthwhile member benefit). In it, Axelrod discussed the human wish to impose order, to seek out patterns and rules that can guarantee success. I'm paraphrasing here, but when this pattern-seeking tendency is wed to a random, unpredictable environment, we have trouble accepting chaos and continue searching for some hidden, reliable cause-and-effect (if I do X and Y, then Z will necessarily follow).

But publishing's not like that, he argues, and an author can't duplicate another writer's success predictably because he/she can't duplicate whatever "random factors were at play." In trying (desperately at times) to impose order, authors waste a lot of time and money on promotional efforts and checking whatever numbers they can glean instead of doing the one thing that really gives them a better shot at success: diligently writing more good books.

He also shares a pair of quotes that particularly struck me, the first from Leonard Mlodinow, who tells us, "What I've learned above all is to keep marching forward...one important factor in success is under our control: the number of at bats, the number of chances taken, the number of opportunities seized."

The second quote, Thomas Watson (who founded IBM) shares this world-rocking wisdom: "If you want to succeed, double your failure rate."

I've been writing in this blog for quite a while about authors who rise after years of obscurity or crash and burn under one or two names before triumphing under yet another. As long as the writer keeps "marching forward," there's always the chance that publishing's roulette wheel will eventually stop at his/her number, always a reason to have hope.

So today, let's accept the harsh truths about this business. There are a ton of random factors. There's not a shred of "fairness." Real talent is often overlooked, and at times the mediocre flourish.

Take a deep breath and move past this. Then move on to the work you love.

*Thanks so much to Steve Axelrod (may you and your clients prosper) and Julie Ann Long (may all bestseller listes be yours) for this meaty and thought-provoking article. Thanks also to Carsten Peter for this awesome National Geographic photo.

How do you measure a year?

Well, on Broadway, of course it's 525,600 minutes...



Around here, there's less vibrato, more gelato. As close as I can calculate, my experience of 2008 consisted of:

188,400 words Not counting all the stuff that ended up on the cutting room floor, or the time spent revamping, rewriting, rethinking, I produced a finished first draft of a mystery novel, a signed/sealed/delivered ghost memoir, and some sizable pieces of my WIP.

22 Friday night critique sessions And for another year, I'd have to say that my critique group is one of the best things to happen to my personal and professional life. I'm not even counting the one-on-one coffee and crit or (or coffee and commiseration) sessions.

12,775 text messages About evenly split between Boy Man, Girl Child, and Grizzly Bear. Of course, that balance will tip dramatically this week since Jerusha got her tonsils out on Tues and can only communicate her need for Popsicles and crochet hooks via text.

Only 4 printer cartridges How much do we love the Internet? The days of printing and sending hard copies are few and far between. Pretty much copy edits and galley proofs. I print for critique, read-throughs, and work-on-the-plane stuff.

4285 hours of ass-in-chair writing I put in a lot of tailbone-numbing 17 hour days, but there were a few lovely days of utter sloth and Top Chef reruns.

74 hours of Top Chef reruns I know this is an odd fixation for a person who doesn't know how to cook and has no interest in learning, but I love this show. I don't spend many hours watching TV or movies, so when I do it's either research or pure escape.

410 hours at the gym Spin class twice a week, Pilates once or twice, and some resistance training. Sadly, none of that has been in the last six weeks. I've hardly been to the gym since Hurricane Ike shut the place down for a few weeks and got me out of the habit. (Cracking tiny whip in my head, but it's not working.)

2190 hours of sleep Which is not nearly enough. I average four or five hours a night plus a 45 min afternoon nap. One of my goals for 2009 is to go to bed before midnight at least four times a week.

43 pounds of bird seed I've trained a veritable chamber choir of song birds to buffet daily on my window sill. Some will actually tap on the glass if the cafeteria has run low on sunflower seeds. I get a ridiculous amount of pleasure from my office window birds.

I won't say anything sappy about how the moments of joy and I love yous have been countless. The fact is, frustrations were many and peace hard to come by. But I'd have to say, this was a year with a thousand good stories.

So how did your year add up?

Gift Ideas for Your Favorite Writer

As the holiday season approaches, one of my toughest writing assignments is to come up with a list of gifts I might enjoy. Normally, I jot down the titles and authors of a few novels (this year's requests: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, The Given Day by Dennis Lehane, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, and, somewhat incongruously, Duma Key by Stephen King.) or ask for a nice Barnes & Noble giftcard, since to my mind, absolutely nothing is more fun than an afternood spent blowing someone else's money at a bookstore.

So what else besides novels could a writer want? Here are a few ideas, ranging from the inexpensive to the pricey, for your consideration. And writers, this could be a good list to print out, highlight, and "accidentally" leave lying about.

1. Ruled Moleskine Notebook: For $17.95 or less ($12.21 at Amazon), you get the journaling notebook used by countless famous writers. Cheaper notebooks can be had, but the quality's nice... the inspiration priceless.

2. One fancy, boxed pen, such as this Cross Contour. One of the most thoughtful gifts I've received, early in my writing career, was a fine-quality pen, which the giver (my mother-in-law) said I should have for booksignings. These range widely in price, but it's the idea that the giver believes the writer will have signings and they should be special events that matters.

3. Here's a free one. A book of coupons for blocks of writing time. These could be offers to take care of the kids or tend some time-consuming chore while the writer in your life goes to a coffee house to create. (A giftcard to said coffee house is a nice touch, too, though I prefer the fabulously-free public library for my writing outings.) The real gift is the acknowledgment that you understand that writing time is a valuable commodity, not just something to be squeezed in between household chores, housework, and the day job.

4. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Every writer on the planet should own two copies, one to keep and one to share. Best resource ever for quitting the stalling and actually producing. And it's in paperback, too.

5. My husband once made me a coupon stating that he'd work XX days of overtime so I could go to a very special writers' conference in NYC. I cried when I read it. Helping a writer attend a conference (it doesn't have to be a distant of expensive one, either) is a wonderful gift.

6. Asus Eee PC 4G Smaller and lighter than a laptop, this Linux-based mini-PC has flash-based memory, so it's tough as nails. Perfect for the traveling writer, it allows one to check e-mail and write on the fly, then easily tucks into a purse. I saw one of these colorful, hard-shelled wonders at a conference and immediately fell in lust. At $345.10 at Amazon, they're a lot for the $$$... a perfect replacement to my Alphasmart, which finally croaked after years of service. Alas, this one's too much an extravagance for me this year, but that won't stop me from drooling!

So what are your favorite writing gift ideas? Has a loved one ever surprised you with a great one you'd like to share?

Lifestyles of the Creative and Unconventional

Last year, my son's Christmas stocking was plumped with two books that were perfect for his gap year travel lifestyle: Ayun Halliday's hilarious No Touch Monkey and the Lonely Planet guide to Cambodia. This year, Ike's back in school and as Henry Miller said, "there is only one great adventure and that is inward toward the self..." So I just ordered The Career Guide for Creative and Unconventional People by career counselor Carol Eikleberry, PhD.

Sample:

...So this is not a set of how-to-do-it tips for boneheads. Instead, consider this book your invitation to adventure. By adventure I mean personal growth: the spiritual quest to become the person you were born to become. The adventure begins when you set out to develop your own unique potential instead of following conventional expectations to become like someone else. It is a hero's journey, undertaken not only to develop your own potential but also to return with a gift for the world.

I'll let you know how it goes. Meanwhile, check out Dr. Eikleberry's pragmatic Tips for Life/Work Transitions, which I plan to post on my Wall o' Smartness. Transitioning from project to project can be a mindbender, and I always flounder and flail through it. Might not hurt to try it with a sane survival strategy.

Didn't We Just *Have* Christmas?

It is an unwritten rule that the busiest season for any writer will be the busiest season of her personal life. And when it comes to the mom-writer, the Christmas season is often the busiest of all.

Which means, it's only a matter of days (weeks, perhaps) before my edits show up, which will derail my attempts to get my current off-track WIP back on track. In these desperate hour, shopping goes online and decorating goes... well, let's put it this way. Two years ago I relegated all decorating to the guys, and we haven't put up a tree since.

But nevertheless, there's something warm and fuzzy about Christmas that remains stubbornly nestled in my heart. The music, the wrapping, and of course the reason for the season, that best-beloved of all stories... and most meaningful.

And then there are Rudolph and Clarice, perhaps the first star-crossed romance that captured my imagination. They'll be making their Christmas visit to network TV this Wednesday evening, and this year, I swear I'm making time to revisit that favorite childhood memory.