Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 589

When choosing a spouse, acceptance isnt enough.

When my daughter is old enough to understand, I am going to offer her some spouse identification advice.

My friend, Kim, tells her children that the most important decision they will ever make is choosing the person they will marry, and I think she is right.

With that said comes the single most important quality that a person should look for in a spouse:

Appreciation for exactly who you are.

Acceptance, I will tell me daughter, is not enough.  Not close to being enough, though there are those who will tell you that it is. 

Acceptance is too close to toleration, and toleration never lasts.  Only when someone truly appreciates and admires you for who you are can you truly be happy. 

When you find this quality in a person, you must recognize it as a gift and grab onto it with all your might.

My wife demonstrates this quality often.   

Tonight she emailed me this photograph of a page of Ralph Waldo Emerson quotations.  The title of the email was:

Read the first one

I am quite certain that it's not always easy to live with a person who actively seeks opportunities to question convention and challenge norms.

But in sending me this photograph, Elysha not only acknowledges who I am but also expresses appreciation for who I am as well.

I least I think so. 

Making great use of our Hurricane Irene entrapment

My wife spent a portion of our Hurricane Irene morning teaching Clara to type.

Apparently she has been learning that letters in combination amount to words as well.  In addition to identifying the spelling of her name, she also identified the spelling on Mommy and Daddy off camera.  

These are highly phonetic words, so it's not as if she is actually spelling them.  But she is recognizing letter-sound relationships, which is great. 

I have many memories from Hurricane Irene, including:

1. The gym being closed.
2. McDonald's being closed.
3. Missing my chance to play golf in the hurricane because of highway closures.
4. Teaching Clara to catch hurricane rain on her tongue.
5. Our storm damage.

But watching Clara type on an actual keyboard for the first time will probably be my most memorable. 

Resolution update: August 2011

1.  Lose 23 pounds, bringing me down to my high school track and field weight.

Down 21 pounds as of this morning.  I may be setting a new goal shortly.  

2.  Do at least 50 100 200 push-ups and 50 100 sit-ups a day.

I did not miss a day in August. 

I have also started running for about 30 minutes in the evenings after Clara has gone to bed as well as some barbell work in front of the television. 

Though it is not a part of my New Year's resolution, my string of three straight months without missing a day at the gym was snapped last week by the hurricane, but not by any lack of effort on my part.  I went in the morning, but they were closed.   

3.  Practice the flute for at least an hour a week.

Failed again.

4.  Find a wine that I can drink every night or so.

Tried six new wines in August.  Elysha surprised me with a night out at a wine bar.  I found one wine that was better than the rest, but I did not find one that I especially liked.   

5.  Complete my fifth novel.

This just got a lot harder.  After approaching the halfway point of my next novel, a new idea lodged itself in my head and would not leave.  I tried to ignore it but could not.  I promised that I would get to it soon, but it refused to bargain.  So I have done the unthinkable: With four months to go in 2011, I have put my manuscript aside and begun a new one.

I have a lot of work ahead of me.

6.  Complete and submit one children's book to my agent.

Still done.  I will be resubmitting a revised version in September.   

7.  Complete the book proposal for the non-fiction collaborative project that I began last year.

My photographer blew off our August meeting, and I am a quite upset about this turn of events.  I will follow-up with her in September and hopefully get things back on track.    

8.  Complete an outline for my memoir

Done.  The writing of the memoir continues.    

9.  Convince my sister to write on http://107federalstreet.blogspot.comat least once a week and do the same myself.

She agreed to write. She promised to write. And once again she didn't write.

10.  Drink at least four glasses of water every day.

Done.

11.  Complete at least one of the three classes required for me to teach English on the high school level.

Good news!  I may not be required to complete any coursework.  I have registered for the Praxis II test for English in November (which is reportedly the most difficult of all these certification tests), and if I pass, that may be all I need to do. 

I must now decide whether or not to study for the test or take it cold. 

12.  Try liver.

Nope.  But I found someone who wants to try it with me!

13.  Publish an Op-Ed in a national newspaper.

Nope.  And sadly, I did not win the short story contest. 

I am currently working on an article for The Millions, an online magazine offering coverage on books, arts, and culture. 

I am also submitting a column idea and sample piece to McSweeney's, a very popular literature and humor website.

I may also repackage a blog post in the form of an editorial and shop it around.    

14.  Participate in The Moth as a storyteller, at a live show or on their radio broadcast.

Done.  As the winner of my StorySlam, I compete in the Moth's GrandSlam event in October as well.  Details to follow.   

15. See our rock opera (The Clowns) performed on stage as a full production or in a dramatic reading format.

Our dramatic reading is scheduled for November 5 and 6.  You can read all about it on the theater's website by clicking here.

16.  Organize my basement.

Progress continues, but a full day will probably be required to complete the job.  Perhaps over December break if I can't get to it sooner.

17.  Land at least one paying client for my fledgling life coach or professional best man business.

Done!   

18. Rid Elysha and myself of all education debt before the end of the year.

Still waiting on the funding.

19. Replace the twelve ancient windows on the first and second floor of the house with more energy efficient ones.

Still waiting on the funding.

20. Make one mortgage payment from poker profits.

No poker in August. I remain stuck on a little less than 25% of a mortgage payment so far.

21. Post my progress in terms of these resolutions on this blog on the first day of every month.

Done. 

Taking after Daddy

When I was in junior high and high school, I was a proud member of the school's drum corps.  During my six years as a member of our school's competitive marching band, we won two six straight Massachusetts titles and two New England titles.

When your school doesn't have a football team, the marching band can become kind of cool.   

In my tenure with the band, I marched in the Macy's Day parade, the Rose Bowl and at Disney World. 

Some of my best memories come from my marching band days. 

It would appear that my daughter might be following in her Daddy's footsteps. 

I mean, she's only two years old and stumbled upon this drum kit set up at the mall, but it almost looks as though she knows what she is doing.

Right?

Or am I just being one of those fathers?

A new plan for dealing with the never-ending coffee clichs

I know I have attacked the institution of coffee before and also immediately reconsidered that same position.

But did you know that there are nine Dunkin's Donuts within three miles of my home, and seven of them are located within my relatively small, suburban town?

My commute is about five minutes, and I pass two along the way.

Not to mention five Starbucks and an assorted of non-branded coffee shops.

The stuff is everywhere.

It's also not uncommon for me to arrive at a meeting where the only beverage being served is coffee.

For the non-coffee drinker, it seems as if coffee can be found at every turn.

My complaint, however, has never been with coffee or the consumption of coffee, but once again, with the constant dialogue attached to coffee. 

The comments, the complaints, the Facebook updates, the tweets, the laments, and the jokes about needing that first cup.

I can get through a single day without being clichéd to death with coffee.

That's the crux of the problem.  Drink as much coffee as you'd like, but could you all just stop talking about it so much, or at least find something new to say about it? 

In order to make me feel better, I've come up with a solution:

I am going to echo every coffee comment, complaint and cliché with an identical statement, except I will replace the word coffee with orange juice, a beverage which I consume almost every morning. 

You tell me that you need a cup of coffee to wake you up?

I'll say the same for that glass of OJ I drank this morning.

You tell me that it's going to be a "three cup day"?

I'll lament my decision to drink just a single glass of orange juice this morning.

Tweet something like "The Black Canister has been unearthed! Coffee is nigh (an actual tweet from today)."

I'll tweet, "The oranges have been picked and squeezed. OJ is nigh."

This echoing of coffee commentary will serve two purposes:

1.  Maybe after hearing these overdone, overused, clichéd coffee diatribes in a new context, coffee drinkers will consider reducing the number of times they talk about their beverage of choice on a daily basis.

Is this a likely outcome?  No.  But it's possible.

2.  More important, it will amuse me, and in doing so, make me happy.  It's not uncommon for me to do something that is seemingly inane and meaningless in order to amuse myself, and while most people think these things are stupid and pointless, happiness is a commodity that is sorely lacking in many lives and one that I consider precious.  

If I can do this and sprinkle a little joy into my life without hurting anyone (and perhaps engendering a smile or two from others in the process), I'm in.

My wife also thought the idea was amusing and approved of the plan.  Elysha often serves as my barometer in these matters, distinguishing between the amusing and silly ideas and the downright stupid and potentially offensive ones. 

If only I paid better attention to her…

Hurricane Irene on the tongue

I took advantage of the excessive rain of Hurricane Irene to teach my daughter how to catch raindrops on her tongue.

Note that the sound effects were he doing.  She added them without my consent.

Your words are doing more harm than good

Today's Living Social deal for Providence reads like this (with my added commentary):

In a city that's dripping with design (Cranston, Rhode Island?), it's sometimes difficult to define your own personal (font) style (Font? Is that supposed to be a play on words? The world's first and hopefully last attempt at a font joke?). Walk away from the Wingdings (Another bad font joke? Seriously? And how many people will actually understand this unfunny joke and how many will be left wondering what the hell a Wingding is?) and into the salon with today's deal from Wil.O Design Studio in Cranston.

For $100, get a Brazilian blowout (What the hell is a Brazilian blowout?  Do I even want to know?). Or sit for a women's haircut and eyebrow shaping for $27. Spend just $20 to mix that perfect shade of bronze without touching Photoshop (Seriously?  A Photoshop joke, too?  "I've got the perfect shade of spray-on tan for you and I didn't have to use Photoshop to find it!  Ha!") with a full-body spray tan (Who does this anyway?). Armed with eco-friendly products and a fierce sense of what you need (Someone please explain what the hell a "fierce" sense of what I need is), the artists at Wil.O know what it takes to stay unique in a copycat world (Spray-on-tan will keep me looking unique? Are you kidding me?). And, after getting confident with today's deal, crafting the next design standard needn't take more than a single mouse-click or pen-stroke (Could they have constructed a more convoluted and confusing sentence is they had tried?).

After reading the copy twice, I was compelled to send the following email to Wil.O Design Studios this morning:

To Whom It May Concern:

Your Living Social deal arrived in my inbox today.  Though I do not currently require a full body spray tan or a Brazilian blowout, I would like to humbly offer my services in the future when it comes to writing ad copy for your business.  While I am certain that you are highly effective in your area of expertise, the copy for your Living Social deal leaves a great deal to be desired.  For a small fee, I would be more than happy to put my expertise with the written word to work for you, crafting a clear, cohesive ad that will appeal to discernible readers everywhere or editing ad copy that you produce.

I'd be more than happy to send you a list of my credentials if you are interested.

Best of luck with your Living Social deal and with all future endeavors.

I'll let you know if someone responds.  

No buyers remorse here.

"Wait!" my wife said as she was heading upstairs to take a shower. She turned around, went into the living room and switched on the television. 

"What?" I asked. 

"I saw a commercial for the new Hard Knocks (HBO's behind-the-scenes look at a NFL training camp).  I want to make sure we record it."

Reaffirmation that I chose the right girl.

The best girl.

Amorphous, talking blobs do not sell books: Leaning to write physical description

When I wrote my first novel, SOMETHING MISSING, I was lost when it came to the physical description of characters, and the characterization of many secondary characters was entirely non-existent.  No one who read my original manuscript could tell how old my protagonist, Martin, was, or anything else about him in terms of appearance.

I'd venture to say that not a single word of physical description appeared anywhere in the first drafts of the book. 

There were a couple reasons for this. 

First, I possessed a genuine disinterest in physical description which had led to an inability to write it.  When reading, I tend to scan the passages of  description, looking for where the action and dialogue pick back up.  I am rarely concerned with how a character looks or even what the setting might be, and so I reflected this disinterest in my own writing. 

I am also a strong auditory learner with very little visual memory.  I can spend the entire day with my wife and daughter and not be able to tell you what they are wearing once they have left my sight.

I often can't tell you what I'm wearing unless I look down.

Conversely, I can remember everything that was said to me during a day, oftentimes verbatim, and I can recall conversations from weeks, months and ever years earlier with great accuracy.  It sounds like a wonderful talent to possess, but those who know me best will tell you that it doesn't make the nicest person at times. 

Sometimes it's just better to forget what someone has said and move on.

My agent helped me a great deal during the revision process of SOMETHING MISSING in terms of physical description, and since then, I've gotten much better at it. 

I am more aware of it and therefore better at writing it.

A couple of strategies have also helped in this regard.  

Once I knew about my problem, I started keeping lists of physical descriptors that I could use later on.  I would pick up ideas from books that I was reading and by scanning faces in restaurants and identifying previously unnoticed personal attributes.  I would literally write things like, "Oh, there's more than one kind of eyebrow" and "Women wear lots of different stuff in their hair!"  Eventually I started to find it easier to include these descriptors in my fiction.   

I've also started searching for photographs online that best represented certain characters in my fiction order to help facilitate the process of describing their physical characteristics. 

My current manuscript, for example, has a 16-year old punk girl in it, so I searched online for photos of punk teenagers, found one who looked about right, and saved it to my computer.  I referenced this photograph a great deal at the onset of the book and now I have the image of this character firmly set in my mind. 

There is also a flashback scene in my manuscript from the 1980's.  Unaware of female fashion at the time, I used Twitter to ask what punk girls from the 1980's looked like and received a bunch of responses that I am now incorporating into the book.

Slowly but surely, I have overcome this obstacle. 

As my books were later optioned for television and film, I was asked by producers, screenwriters and show runners who I envisioned playing Martin or Milo or some of the other characters from my novels, and for a long, long time I was unable to answer what should have been a simple question.

But since I had no real idea what my characters looked like, I was unable to envision an actor or actress to play them.

One producer asked, "I thought novelists envisioned an actor for each part in  their books?"

I didn't have the nerve to tell him that all I ever envisioned was an amorphous, talking blob of humanity. 

I'm better now, both because I have overcome many of the barriers to physical description, and because I am better prepared for these kinds of questions.

But the biggest lesson I learned through this process has been this:

Just because something isn't important to the writer doesn't mean it isn't important to the reader.  Writing is a two-way process.  You write the story as you see and hear it, but then you must revise the story for how the reader will see and hear it.

Forgetting to do so, or worse, refusing to do so, will leave your reader annoyed and lost.

If you are lucky enough to find a reader for your single-minded, inflexible, presumably precious narrative.     

Spitting in the eye of Hurricane Irene

The hurricane wasn't exactly roaring when we went out to jump in the puddles, but the rain was most definitively hurricane rain.

I'm teaching my daughter to disrespect the power of Mother Nature.