Should we to go back a hundred years to the 1920s instead of our current and challenging 2020? If you see more photos posted from that era, you’ll know where my head is. My editor just informed me she will have my manuscript ready next week. So excited, but still a long way to go.
… waiting to see it in print.
(and fun with photoshop)
You know how, when you finish that memoir, novel, book of poetry, and all of a sudden, your realize it’s done? Over?
Maybe your writing is in the hands of an editor. Maybe your work is already published (Hooray!). But now?
Perhaps you’re all-too familiar with this phenomenon called writer’s block. Maybe you feel the agony of it now because any new characters at your door aren’t knocking loud enough for you to hear.
You miss forming words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into a manuscript. You long to taste new words on your tongue and massage them between your fingers. But they are out of reach. I’m included in this category of empty blockheads.
Perhaps, for novel writers, we should start with a real block. Each of the six sides holds the secrets to starting anew.
Side one: Think of a cool protagonist.
Side two: A badass antagonist.
Side three: The inciting incident. Is it dangerous? Emotional?
Side four: The setting. Dark? Beautiful?
Side five: Devise a plot around sides one through four.
Side six: There’s a theme in there somewhere. What is it?
Don’t know about you, but I’ll be tossing my block around for a while until it hits me in the head.
I have a character, and, like most, she just sort of showed up. But now she lies dormant and I ache for her to return. I think about her but can’t rouse the crazy old bat – even now when there’s plenty of time to spend on the computer.
I know Olvie lives alone. It’s the 1960’s and she takes up space in a small house just outside the old freedom town of Clarksville in Austin, Texas. She tries to fix her hair Marilyn Monroe-style but it comes out looking like Sally’s on the Dick Van Dyke show.
Olvie hates calling telephone numbers that contain a zero. Takes too damn long for the rotary dial to circle all the way back to its starting position. And the rabbit ears on her Magnavox don’t work to satisfaction until 10:00 a.m. when Let’s Make a Deal airs.
Until she chunked old Singer out the window, Olvie used to be a card carrying member of the Sewing Guild. She does, however, still have a license to check out books should she have the hankering to stare at words instead of the boob tube.
A real visitor might enter her house and think they have stepped into the Twilight Zone. Mannequin Gladys, wearing her flapper dress, stares out the window. Half-torsoed Fritz wears the top portion of a lederhosen and precariously balances on the television.
When she encounters the poor soul walking past her house, she poke, poke, pokes his chest, asks if she can spit on his shoes, then adds, “it won’t take long.”
Returning inside, she kicks off her duck slippers and does a quick “shuffle off to Buffalo” to impress Gladys and Fritz. They are catatonically dazzled by her performance.
Dear Olvie, please come back so I can plunk your words and actions down on a keyboard. Get in my face, spit on my shoes if you want. Just show up again.
Your friend, Carolyn
image credit
I wonder why I wander
in this forest thick sans light
how the birds can fly above it all
peering down upon this “sight.”
What must they think of us below –
– this self-discovery mass –
who struggle dusk to dawn each day
to fly a life first class?
But I will not give up this path
dark or light, while restless
for awed discovery of things unknown
makes this wanderer breathless.
Sweat puddles and drips down to her seven-year-old feet
like the ice cream will soon do.
A sweltering Texas summer.
Grandpa grins through his cigar, proud of his summer income.
Peaches in boxes and sacks.
Peaches in crates
lined up on tables beneath his covered stand.
A pocketknife cuts off a slice of sweet fruit
and extends toward a willing customer.
Grandpa smiles again, pleased with the satisfaction on the consumer’s juiced face.
The ancient Black man, mouth empty of teeth, dismounts his horse.
Grandpa readies a fresh peach. “Afternoon, Washington.”
Washington nods, mumbles, shows his gums.
Grandpa adds another peach to his hand. “Take these for your ride to town.”
The man smacks his curved-in lips together,
up and down, up and down,
a toothless man’s “thank you.”
The walk-in cooler an instant relief.
But the bushels of peaches offer no jokes,
no grins,
no Grandpa conversations.
Outside, parched again, she accepts the quarter and returns Grandpa’s smile.
A short walk toward the small diner.
The lady in a pink uniform and matching hat says, “Vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry?”
“Strawberry.”
The ice cream, scooped. The cone, topped with a pink, cold delight.
Fifty steps back to the peach stand.
Fifty steps back to Grandpa.
The ice cream drips and threatens to disappear.
But the heat is no match for Grandpa’s disposition.
His smile and character remains solid, strong, and real.
Un-meltable.
(photo of Grandpa taken in the early sixties)
She was told how fun it would be to watch the parade in small town Fredericksburg, Texas. “Exciting for a four-year-old.”
“Look at that float!” “Carolyn, do you see the clown?”
No. All she saw was the backsides of wiggly people in front of her. The tall, thin man’s suspenders holding up the back of his pants. Arms that pointed to the sky holding miniature American flags.
But she could see behind her – from the grassy field all the way up to the sky.
And there it was. Something she could lay eyes on. Something she found curious and exciting.
She let go of the hem of her grandmother’s, hand-sewn, polka-dot house dress and began to run.
How did he get up there?
Would the man hurt himself when landed?
She continued on, her eyes following the man’s decent from the sky.
The pokey grass would not deter her. Nor the buzzing of summer wasps around her head. The near collisions with jumping grasshoppers were not a distraction.
The man was getting closer.
Panting, yet familiar voices frantically called her name.
When her parents and sister caught up to her, Carolyn pointed to the man.
They were right.
Exciting for a four-year-old.
She chokes on the water and knows what she needs. A concession stand with vending machines.
A flimsy cup no bigger than the size of her small hand drops to the tray and is filled with soda, carbonated water, and ice. A Bruce’s fried pie (lemon or apple, please). An ice-cream sandwich melts instant chocolate on her fingers.
She musters up courage and waits in line for the high dive. Children chatter with excitement, with anticipation. But Sparky Carolyn stays quiet in her nervousness. Perhaps she’s not so sparky after all.
It’s her turn. She makes it up the tall ladder. Her toes rest on the end of the board.
She looks down. It’s a long way to the water.
“Hurry up!” Someone yells.
I’ll go down too far. I’ll run out of air on the way back up.
She backs up and returns to the ladder. Children sigh at having to move aside. She reaches the safety of the flat, hot concrete.
Tomorrow. I’ll do it tomorrow.
Back in the safety of the three-feet depth, she rejoins her friends. She sips tea and eats crumpets under water like a queen. The three girls resurface and giggle at their immense creativity.
“Don’t worry. One day you’ll wake up to find they’ve grown.”
She looks at her friend, then down at her own flat chest.
Tomorrow. Maybe it will happen tomorrow.
“Me” at Northwest Pool in Austin, Texas. (1950-60’s)
This is Mary Jane.
She is a paper doll created by Milton Bradley Co. in the 1950’s.
This is me, created by Mom and Dad in the 1950’s.
This is Paper Doll Me created by, well, me a few days ago.
Why a paper doll? Why here? Why now?
So, this isn’t my brain on drugs. This is my brain “memory sparking”. I think I’ll call her “Paper Doll Sparky”. Maybe “P.D. Sparky” for short. Or “Sparky” for shorter.
I can tell by looking at her that me, I mean Sparky, and Mary Jane wouldn’t have had a lot in common back then. Not that you should judge someone by appearance but she looks like Miss Goody Two-Shoes. I bet she followed all the rules and never once tried to do something new, challenging or creative.
Too bad, so sad.
I bet she never once hid in a gutter, yelled at her mother, or grew to get caught by the principal for smoking cigarettes in the girls bathroom in middle school (we called it Junior High back then).
In fact, she looks just like Lori, the tattle tale girl who ratted me out for lying to my mother when I was five.
So, I stole, I mean borrowed, some of Mary Jane’s clothes. They are mine now and Sparky can wear them for better purposes than to have mundane tea parties with preppy little girls who never climb trees or scrape their knees.
But don’t let the clothes fool you. Wearing one of Mary Jane’s prim and proper dresses won’t take the girl out of her true skin. (Besides, she’s made out of cardboard).
She’s packing up now, getting ready to see what kind of troubles her memories will stir up. As Dad used to say, “Time to separate the sheep from the goats.”
You comin’?
To be continued …
Carolyn Dennis-Willingham 