Saxon Bennett's Blog, page 13

Writing with a Yo-Yo

I'm playing with my red light up yo-yo.  I'm nowhere near capable of doing "around the world" but I'm learning the basics and maybe at some point I might be able to do it.

"Oh, come on just give it a try," my right brain says.  Her name is Rubina. She told me her name because I'd never asked and she got fed up with waiting for an introduction.

"You're not ready," Letty says.  She's my left brain and she introduced herself immediately.

"What's wrong with trying?" Rubina says.  "What's it going to hurt?"

"She'll make a mess of the string.  It'll get all knotted up."

"So?"

"I'll have to deal with it because you're the creative one and function is not in your job description."

"Are you guys dating?" I ask.  They're sounding a lot like me and my ex.

They both give me the "as-if" look from the Asberger Executive Card set which allows for such nuances in expression.

I start doing my fifty reps of yo-yo practice while they sort out the details.  nine, ten, eleven…

"You know this kind of practice is good for eye-hand coordination," Rubina say.  She winks at me.

Letty frowns.  "I suppose."

"And there's the counting aspect, we could do learn to do it in a foreign language and that would be educational," Rubina says.

Twenty-seven, twenty-eight.  I'm reaching a state of zen and new characters and a new scene is forming in my mind's eye.  I no longer care about doing "around the world."  I'm creating my own world.

Rubina nudges me.  I keep going.  Thirty-one, thirty-two.  The character's name comes to me—Penelope Snodgrass and she paints portraits of feet.

Letty scowls.  She's caught on.  I can feel it.  "Have you saved all your tax receipts?  It's that time of year again."

The yo-yo careens toward me and smacks my knee cap.  "#$^%&& ouch!"  I grab my knee.

Letty stalks off, victorious.

Rubina shrugs.  "What can I say, she hates subterfuge."

Things You Never Outgrow

The other day I was explaining to my eleven year-old roommate that one day she would outgrow her stuffed animal obsession.  (I just bought her a stuffed stingray for 22.99 from the Oklahoma Aquarium)  She has about 4 million three hundred and seventy five thousand stuffed animals.  She could have gone to Harvard had it not been for these stuffed animals.  She will realize this later.

I told her, "I don't want you to give this one away, because I like it and when you move out I'll recoup my losses by using it as a door stop."

"I won't give this one away," she said and clutched it to her chest as if I were King Harrod eyeing her child for execution.

Luckily, every year she does a charitable purge of her stuffed animals.  I think most of them are purchased at the church bizarre by pet owners so that my 22.99 purchase becomes a dog toy and gets ripped to shreds by a German Shepherd with pent-up aggression issues.

To accentuate my point about outgrowing things I used anecdotal evidence.  I told her the story of how my mother had the audacity one day to tell me as I rode in the back of our Buick station wagon (without a seatbelt, I had also just drunk out of the hose and rode my bike without a helmet) that I would outgrow toys.  I was certain she'd gotten into my brother's stash of marijuana and was high.

"Oh, I don't think so," I said in that high and mighty tone that a seven year-old uses with her less worldly parents.

"Everyone does," she said.  "It's called growing up."

"It's called boring and I'm not doing it," I retorted.

She smiled that little smile mothers have when they KNOW they're right.

My eleven year-old roommate, still clutching the 22.99 stingray, said, "When I move out I'll take them with me."

I tried to imagine a studio apartment in NYC filled with her six million stuffed animals.  I might have been able to help her with the rent had it not been for the stuffed animal purchases, but I couldn't now because I had my old age to prepare for.

"You'll out grow them.  I did," I said, imitating my high and mighty seven year-old self.

My girlfriend dug the bag of marbles I had just bought at the gift shop out of the bag.  "Do you want your marbles now or do you want to wait until you get home to play with them?"

I glanced around.  Was she talking to me?

letting go

She sniffles.

I hold her and wipe her eyes with the corner of my sleep wrinkled T-shirt.  "It's going to be all right  You like Medora.  She's always really nice to you and she understands you.  What more could you want?"

"I don't want to go.  It'll be different when I get back.  We won't be the same."

"We will.  Only you'll be all grown-up."

More sniffles and few tears. 

"Come on now.  When you get back you'll live three doors down.  We'll visit all the time." 

"You'll be on to new things and they won't involve me."

I look away. This is true.  I'm already formulating new ideas, new people have come into my life and I am ready to move on.

"See."

"I know.  You're right.  But this happens in every relationship.  You're going out into the world and I mean the world.  New people are going to hold you and talk about you.  You can go anywhere now.  Isn't that exciting?"

She lifts her chin a little and her eyes get that look–the one that knows yes she has to go and be a big girl. 

"You ready?"

"Yes," she says and holds her head up and straightens her shoulders.

I press the send button.

"In the Unlikely Event" the novel I've spent the last year with is leaving home for her final pass.  When she comes back she'll have a cover and she'll be a book and I won't be able to change anything, any part of her–that semi-colon that sits on my desk like a giant toad didn't find his way into yet another book.  He sticks his tongue out and tries to snag a paper clip–histrionics which I ignore.

i just wanna color

i used to tell my brother, troy, that when he wanted me to watch creature feature with him on saturday mornings–i just wanna color.  he was too frightened to watch them alone.  i would lug my 96 box of crayolas and my latest coloring book downstairs to the "rumpus room" (where the hell that name came from i don't know.  when i was small i would go in there with trepidation looking for the rumpus creature around the door, beneath the couch, hiding behind the book-case—but i digress)  i would color and he would allow himself willingly to be terrified.  i was just as easily terrified, but i didn't look.  i still don't look at horror stuff.  i wear a hoodie and pull my hood up when the terrifying stuff starts.  it doesn't embarrass me–i can't see myself, as for my companions…well.  i spent a lot of my early misspent youth coloring.  i couldn't draw, but i could color.  it was also when i discovered harriet the spy and her notebook.  i graduated from coloring as an artistic outlet to spying on people and jotting down my thoughts–now remember that part (i'm assuming you all have read harriet the spy–pleeease, what childhood would be complete without it–but i digress) where her friends discover her notebook and read it?  well, that stuff really does happen.  mine was discovered and not exactly perused–i got it back in time, but its contents came under suspicion and then it disappeared.  my mother swears it is somewhere in the house–but i looked a lot.  to this day is still missing.

now where was i going with all this?  oh, yeah, i started coloring again.  i find it relaxing.  i don't relax well.  well, in fact i don't relax.  i work ten hours a day, come home, shower, eat and then head to my computer to write or edit.  i never considered myself a workaholic, but i think i have may a problem. my girlfriend layce told me last night when i came home sick after working ten hours that i needed to relax–just chill.  i looked at her in alarm.  "what would i do?" i showered, ate dinner and edited.  i went to bed early that's got to count for something.  this morning i edited and then my coloring books called my name.  "hey, you, wanna color?" the one with the medieval gargoyles whispered.  "come on you need to relax." so i did. now we have to digress to how the coloring came back into my life.

layce and i are standing in the office supply aisle and she sees the crayons.  "i used to like to color," she said.  "me too!" i replied.  we bought the crayons and then went in search of coloring books–that's when the trail got thorny.  there's a lot of disney coloring books out there.  we bought two but not with delight.  nothing against disney.  so when i got amazon gift cards for christmas i went in search of coloring books.  there are hundreds of them!  oh, my younger self had a pogo stick moment.  my older self did that hand-flapping thing i'm noted for–something akin to hummingbird wings.  i was excited and overwhelmed.  i did narrow it down to three.  they're medieval tapestries and gargoyles.  those choices have reason, but we'll leave that for another time.

i carefully chose my colored pencils.  okay, i admit my adult self came into the buying equation and said, "come on, buck up and get a good set of colored pencils.  you won't regret it." so i did.  now to the real crux of my blog and a personal fascination of mine.  right brain left brain.  i've mentioned it before. i'm coloring away and a scene for my new book comes up, the characters start talking to me and a new persona pops in my tech gal.  she says "look, write these scenes with each character, put it in its own file and then when we weave the book together you can do that control-c, control-v thing that you've learned, kind of.  we'll have supervision when we do it.  i'm telling you it'll be so much better than that last debacle with the notebook and post-it thing you did.  i don't think even i can straighten that one out."

the left brain isn't even interested in any of this.  she is happily coloring along and thinking about shading and cross hatching, color choices and the effects of lighting.  the right brain is coming up with a scene between a little girl name Pen and the doctor she meets in the ER for my new novel 33 Moon Street.

Stop Stealing Our Stuff

It's bad.  So bad that I am complaining.  I'm not much for complaints.  I'm a fixer.  I take the problem and break it down into composite parts.  So here it is.  I write books.  I love to write.  I wrote them well enough to get published.  It took me three books and ten years of my life.  Granted, I went to college to study English Lit so I could write better and I wallered through until I got published.  I suffered doubts, I hated my writing, I strove to overcome so you all could read my stuff—so you could see yourselves, ourselves, in art—not as a side player, not as an afterthought but as a central character, a protagonist with a life full of other lesbians and lesbian issues and lesbian love.

Now the business part of writing means SELLING books.  This does not mean downloading unauthorized FREE ebooks.  This is theft on the person who buys a book and then puts in on a site and advertises flagrantly that anyone can download it for free.  That is wrong.  That is stealing.  Pirating, despite being against the law, is very difficult if not impossible to prosecute. It's also virtually impossible to stop.

The only way to help is to not do it.  Don't download the pirated FREE ebook.  You, the reader, who does this is also stealing.  You didn't buy the book.  You didn't support the publishing house.  You didn't pay the author royalties.  You aren't helping to support the artistic endeavor.  All endeavors take cash.  I've seen lesbian publishers go down the toilet for lack of support.  I've known authors who no longer bother to write lesbian fiction because they don't make money at it.

You want to see yourself in books, you want to read books about lesbians, then you need to BUY them or someday there won't be any.  Or there won't be any good ones because the good writers won't write lesbian fiction because once again it doesn't pay and lesbian publishers will go down the toilet because they don't make money.

Okay, to add to the problem of not making money is buying a book and telling your friends how much you like the book and then everyone reads your copy.  I'm not saying that loaning a book is bad.  I'm saying that it's not helping to support your community artists.  You don't loan a painting that you bought to your friends so they can hang it on their wall.  You don't buy a cute T-shirt at the Pride picnic and then everyone you know wears it.  That kind of loaning I can get past because I don't think my readers really think about it in that way, but they should.  On average an ebook costs about ten dollars.  A latte costs five.  Don't have lattes for a week and you can buy a book.  Buy a book and feed an author.

Please share this blog with everyone you know.  Also check out Layce Gardner's blog on how fight this kind piracy.

the fur snake

living in a house with another writer means you have to negotiate what is real from what is real with a twist. my girlfriend layce gardner is a very talented, very funny writer. she has the same quirk chromosome that i do. sometimes we have to negotiate on who gets to "use that" as we call it when something oddly entertaining occurs–a quirk moment that the universe has seen fit to bestow upon us. the "fur snake" moment came when a family fable was created about a creature i had seen hanging around the garden. layce and em started telling me about the oklahoma snake that was  large and dangerous and as the story continued the snake ended up having fur. the fur part finally tipped me off. so now when a real story goes real with a twist i ask, "is this like the fur snake?" which is code for it should have gone this way and isn't it more amusing? and yes it is. it's the kind of thing writers do all the time. we take what we see and turn in into something just a little better than real. a distilled moment noted and mulled over and then tweaked. some of the time it's an instant revamp. other times it foments. when those two things come together it becomes a novel.

stranger in a strange land

i have lived in washington, colorado, utah, minnesota, arizona, new mexico and now oklahoma. always being the resident alien gives me fresh eyes. i become more aware of things. i've tried the "mindfulness" exercises of really learning to pay attention to every moment of my every day–washing the dishes, something i don't like, and learn to be present, experience the warm water, the soapy smell and feel of the sponge as you wipe the plate clean. i tried it. i did. my mind floated off to somewhere else land in a hurry, kind of like when you see someone you don't want to talk to and you make for the nearest exit or if caught you pretend to be talking on your cell phone so all you have to do is wave. "mindfulness" has the same result on my mind.

so i move around. this is not to say i don't spend a few years here and there, but i eventually need a new place. i got disenchanted in the land of enchantment–that should tell you something. so i submit to my wanderlust and find a reason to move. it's also a good way to divest yourself of extraneous pieces of furniture and clothes you haven't worn in years. this last time i got it pared down to sporting equipment, books, music and clothes that i do wear. i feel clutterfree and clean.

i have new surroundings, meet new people, learn regional slang and pronunciations and experience the scenery–going from desert brown to verdant green has recharged my environmental eyesight. they are both good. don't get me wrong, but i needed the change to freshen me up–to make me see things again.  being a resident alien has it costs. you leave behind friends and you miss special places that were once part of your daily existence.  they become the ghost films that are memory.   you make new films and begin a new life.  i've done it so many times that i feel like a chrysalis caught in a revolving door, but wanderlust fuels me and i'll set off again.  different fuels my writing self.  i get a new vista and new ideas.  i take a good look around and start writing.

Seducing my left brain

whenever i start a new piece of fiction that involves something i haven't done before like writing in a different tense or a different genre i have to seduce my left brain into relaxing so that my creatively oriented right brain (i really am a believer in that business of brain division) can get to work creating.  i let my left brain back in when we've got something down on paper–then her skills are appreciated at least by me.  my right brain gets a testy occasionally when left brain becomes overly bossy.

so the seduction begins with music and candlelight.  i think the candlelight, (i still have another light source–i'm not  medieval enough to actually write by candlelight) sets the mood.  yes, i know this is sounding like sex (or as my girlfriend tells me–romance) but there are times when things other than one's nether regions need to be seduced.  the candle lighting ceremony indicates the beginning of writing time.  my right brain perks up and my left brain starts to relax.

then i choose some music–it has to be slower stuff like leonard cohen or nora jones.  my left brain is very music oriented.  all her neurotic tendencies, bouts of nerves and on some occasions panic attacks can be staved off by simply turning on the tunes.  music is mathmatical and i think that's why she is so attracted to it.  music has order and method and that, to use an old cliche, soothes her soul.

this done, we begin to create while lefty eases back in her chair–i imagine with a good glass of cabernet sauvignon (i don't drink wine, but i allow for brain side preferences) and finds peace.  she shuts down her doubting thomas self and lets me get to it or rather righty get to it. 

now those of you who have read my novels are probably thinking where are these different kinds of books i'm speaking of, well, all i can say is they're coming and i hope you'll be delighted and surprised.  writing is about stretching and striving and that's what keeps me going.

 

 

 

Trailer for "Marching to a Different Accordion"

Check out my trailer!

It's on youtube at:  http://youtu.be/xyZUH_TL9-k

Thanks!

the moment when i decided to be a writer.

it had to do with notebooks and shoes.  i had just finished reading Harriet the Spy and i was eleven.  two things blazed upon my memory–the first was realizing the delight and danger of pen and paper and the second was Harriet throwing the shoe at her father in her despondency because he didn't or couldn't realize the depth of what had happened to her.  she had been outed, her notebook and thoughts violated and subsequently despised by her cohorts.  i knew as i began to write my first notebook and really started to look and record my world that i was born to a life of low pay and discouragement but one full of discovery.  i wasn't going to be a teacher or Perry Mason. i knew then writing was my calling.  i could make a world and give breath to the people i created.  the shoe story came later.  it was the critical thing that began my first published novel.  it took eight years of growing up to write my first unpublished novel which was full of youthful angst and my discovery of women's anatomy and my desire for it.  basically i was getting laid and writing about it in an overly dramatic novel of love and loss. the published novel arrived eleven years later and would be my third attempt and it had a pair of burning shoes in it and became The Wish List.  you'll have to read the book to discover the riddle of the burning shoes or not as you chose.  there you have it–paper, pen, leather and lighter fluid created the writer i am today.  sundays always seem right for confessionals.