Potato Salad (Writing Excuses course, Season 5)

“Look, Mom! I coated my left hand with magical ink!” The little boy held up his hand for her inspection. It was indeed covered in mystic scribbles made in blue ink—magical or not.

She pulled a melodramatic, astonished face, hands to the sides of her face and eyes wide. The boy laughed and returned to his work, continuing his chatter. His mother, meanwhile, began chopping the potatoes she had just finished peeling for a potato salad.

“Do you know, Mom, that if snails had wings they still wouldn’t be able to fly? Their shells would weigh too much. They would have to get out of the shell or something,” here the boy squirmed in demonstration, “and hope another snail didn’t take it while they were away. Do you think a flying snail would be faster than a real one? I think so. The shell is probably why they are so slow.”

His mother rapped the counter with her knife, and he glanced up at her from his careful concentration on his hand—the right one now. She signed to him that she wanted some ingredients from the basement refrigerator, and then wrote down a small list for him. Eggs, mayonnaise, mustard. He sighed dramatically, put down his pen, and ran downstairs to fill her order.

She had just chopped the last potato when he came back, placing the items on the counter and then following her gesture to put a pot on to boil for the eggs. When he got back to his position at the counter, he picked up his red pen and continued his work.

“I think I’m allergic to eggs, Mom,” he said after a moment of pondering and quiet. Without looking up to catch her eye roll, he elaborated. “I mean, my fingers always hurt after I peel them and eggs can make you sick.”

He looked up at her. “Nice try,” she signed.

He shrugged. “Well, you’ll be sorry when you find out and have to take me to the hospital to get my fingers amputated, then.”

“Maybe you should be more careful with the eggs,” she signed.

“But Mom, better safe than sorry.”

He drew a picture of a flying snail on his thumb, with the shell on the knuckle at the base of his ring finger. The shell was disproportionately large, taking up at least three colors to construct, while the snail was dwarfed by the butterfly wings he gave it. Bored with that soon, he began to draw a rocket ship on the inside of his wrist. It was his goal to someday be an astronaut, and he had been practicing drawing rockets for about a week now.

His mom rapped the counter with her knife again. She had been reading the recipe, but now she wanted the boy to put his pens away and help her clean up the counter. He put the pens in his pocket. “Mom, at school I learned that there’s this thing called ‘gravity’ that is constantly smashing us down into the Earth. Like, ALL THE TIME. But if you get far enough away from Earth, it isn’t there anymore and that is why astronauts float around in the air. But if you are in space and you don’t have anything to hold on to, then you just float away and there’s no way to come back. So that’s why they wear jetpacks. Jetpacks are so cool. I wish I could have one.”

Just then, dad came home. He shouted out his arrival and the boy ran from the kitchen to greet him, followed more slowly by his mother. “He wants a jetpack,” she signed to him by way of greeting, leaning against the doorway into the entryway.

“A jetpack? What would you do with a jetpack?” he asked, turning to his son, who was busy wrapping himself around his dad’s feet by way of requesting a ride back to the kitchen.

The little boy let go quickly and jumped to his feet. “I would go everywhere! I could take it to school and show all my friends, and I could use it to fly around the house, and I could use it to even run errands for Mom!”

“You want to run errands for Mom? I bet she would love that. You could take your bike to the store tomorrow morning to get the groceries.”

“No, that’s too far and I couldn’t carry it all.”

“What did you do to your hands?”

“It’s magical ink,” his wife signed.

“Ancient runes!” dad said, dropping to his knees to examine his sons hands. “What does the snail mean? What power does it give you?”

“The power of flight!”

His father straightened, nodding and eying his son. A moment later, he pounced, swiping the boy up into the air and running with him past his wife and into the living room to throw him on the couch. The boy laughed, screaming to be put down, but requesting a repeat immediately after impact.

Dad said no, and Mom told him to come help her peel the eggs. “But I’m allergic!”

“No, you aren’t.”

“If he says he’s allergic, honey, maybe you should listen to him. I’ll swap him jobs and he can go mow the lawn instead.”

“No! I want to peel the eggs!”

“But aren’t you allergic?”

The boy ignored the comment and ran to wash his hands in the kitchen sink. The man gave his wife a quick kiss and did turned to wash his hands, too. The three of them peeled the eggs, the boy giving his dad a rundown of how his day went.

“There’s this boy at school who is, like, really good at math and stuff, and he said he would help me with my multiplication because I’m not so good at it, except I am really good at stuff like fractions and stuff.”

“He got a 96 on his math test,” his mom signed.

“A 96? Why don’t we have this boy in college yet?”

“Because I’m still too little, Dad. You have to be big to go to college.”

“How big? Can we send you next year?”

“No! I have to, like, graduate high school.”

“What else happened at school today?”

“Well, my friend Dustin and I played tag at recess, and I had to run a little slower so he didn’t feel bad because he is not as fast as me. But I still won.”

“Do you always play tag at recess?”

“No, sometimes I play on the monkey bars.”

“Because you’re a monkey?”

The boy sighed. “Dad, they aren’t for monkeys. They’re for kids.”

“But why do they call them monkey bars, then?”

“I don’t know! Maybe the person who made them liked monkeys!”

“And how was your day, honey?”

“Good. I helped our neighbor Mrs. Rodney with her bird. It’s so loud; I had no idea birds could be so shrill. How was work?”

They were on the last egg, so the boy washed off his hands and scampered up the stairs to his room. The woman rolled her head around, stretching out her neck from being hunched over. She started chopping them. 

“It was good,” he signed to her.

“No angry customers today?”

“No, thank goodness. I don’t think I could have taken another day like yesterday. Fifty tons! What could she have wanted with that much top soil, anyway? Is she trying to plant an indoor farm or something?”

The last egg finished, his wife added them all to the potatoes, spooning in the relish and other ingredients and stepping aside to let him stir. She jumped up to sit on the counter, telling him about the sick canary she had been working with that day. Much as she exclaimed over the incessant tweeting, she really did love her part-time job, something she had started a few months before at her husband’s suggestion. Since then, her end of their evening conversations had been speckled with stories about various dogs—both sweet and terrifying—cats, which she wasn’t particularly fond of, and other animals that were treated at the clinic. She was getting to the point where she recognized many of the dogs she saw nosing the wind while riding down the interstate. As for the owners, she didn’t have much to do with them, so she had yet to walk up to a familiar dog or cat while in public and start interacting with it.

Her husband interrupted her retelling of her day to tell her he loved her. She smiled and repeated the sentiment. Upstairs, they could hear their son as he began commentating his play. “And he comes in from the side! Oh no! He’s out of gas! Can he make it back to his crew before he loses the race?”

“What’s for dinner?”

“If you would please grill these beef patties, we’re having hamburgers.”

“Oh good. I’ll have that commentator upstairs come down to help you, then.” He trotted up the stairs, grabbed his son, and carried him down again, screaming and laughing at the same time. Placing him back on his feet at the bottom, he said, “Go help your mom. It’s either this or we boil more eggs and eat them for dinner.”

“No!” The boy ran to his mom and stood at attention in front of her. His dad took the beef patties and went outside, and the woman directed the boy to start setting the table while she sliced tomatoes.

Spirit Photographer (Writing Excuses prompt, Season 4)

It may have been an accident at first, but it sure wasn't an accident the second time. His great-grandpa's old camera had been neglected for so long in the attic that Carter had not even been sure it still would work, but a careful restoration brought it back into pristine condition, itching to be used again.

Carter had set up shop in his living room, cajoling his mother into sitting still on the couch so he could take her picture. The photograph that came out was of his mother, all right, but there was someone else there, too. His great-grandpa, original owner of the camera. He sat on the couch beside Carter's mother, legs stretched out in front of him and arms crossed, smiling. The image was not clear enough to have an idea of what he was wearing, but Carter's mom was sure that's who it was. They stuck it on the fridge and tried again. This time, grandpa was in the background, examining the refrigerator, while Carter's mom sat straight-backed in anticipation.

"He's here!" she said when the picture came out a few hours later. Carter couldn't tell if she was excited or petrified. As for him, he shrugged it off. The guy wasn't being noisy or upsetting his life, so it was fine by him if the ghost wanted to hang out in the house. No sweat.

He told his girlfriend about the incident, and it spread from there until he found himself gaining a reputation as a "spirit photographer," the go-to guy when you wanted to see what the dead were up to. Chances were about 20% that a ghost would be in your picture, then another 75% that you would recognize that ghost as a deceased relative or friend. It freaked some people out, but it gave others peace of mind. One older lady had wanted to use the picture as her husband's obituary photo, claiming it as the most recent picture of the fellow and saying it would give hope to the other people reading the section. "They are not gone," was the first sentence of the obit. He felt pretty bad for the dead guy, because for that shoot the woman had dragged him out to a nearby lake because she was sure that's where his ghost would be. Sure enough, the guy was fishing. Or pretending to, anyway. Carter didn't pretend to understand anything these people did.

He was getting so used to this business that he didn't even blink when a man called him to ask for a portrait so he could see his wife, who had been dead for six years. They picked a time and day, and next thing he knew, Carter was pulling into a driveway in a suburb. The sprinklers were on outside and the green front door had "Welcome" printed on it in orange lettering. He knocked.

A man in his mid-thirties answered the door, wearing a tweed suit and holding a hardbound book. Carter introduced himself and was immediately ushered in. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to make contact with her?" the man started saying, offering him a seat on a couch and spinning a wooden chair around to sit on it backward. "I promised her before she died that I would keep tabs on her as best I could, but it's terribly difficult. Last I heard was in the shower a couple weeks ago, when I could tell she was nearby. But that doesn't tell me squat. I want to know how she's holding up. So when I heard about you--"

Carter nodded, smiling. "It's only natural to want to make sure your wife is doing well. Where do you want me to set up?" he gestured to the box he was carrying, which contained his photography equipment.

"Oh, here's fine. I know she stays in the house most of the time, and she knows you're coming. Probably been primping herself all morning, knowing her."

The man watched Carter set up his equipment, making small talk. Then he held still while the picture was being taken and thanked Carter on his way out the door again. Carter was not fond of hanging around in strange houses. He made it a point to be about his business and understay his welcome every time.

A week later, he returned to give the man the finished photograph.

The man couldn't take his eyes off it. Normally, seeing the photograph was the moment when someone started to cry, or at least to smile faintly. But no, the man was looking concerned.

"What's the matter? Is that not your wife?"

"No, that's her." The woman sat at the feet of the man in the tweed suit who sat in a chair, hands on his knees and gazing up at him lovingly. She was wearing a tank top and sweat pants and she was barefoot. Such a look should have made any devoted husband happy. The man swallowed before adding, "She's pregnant."

Carter glanced again at the photograph. "Looks that way," he said before turning to head out the front door, check in hand.

"She wasn't pregnant when she died."

"Huh."

"She was on the pill."

Carter made an interested noise that was only partially true.

"Has this ever happened before?"

Carter paused, hand on the doorknob, and thought. "No, now that you mention it. This is the first time I have seen a pregnant ghost."

"Come back here and look at this again, please." He sighed and went back to stand beside the man, who was bracing himself against the counter, the photograph lying on the granite surface. His next sentence took a couple tries to get out. "Do you think the baby is mine?"

"How far along do you think she is? If you want me to come back in nine months so we can take a look, I'll be glad to do so. By then, the baby should be born, assuming a nine-month gestation period, and possibly old enough to look like you or not."

The man moved to sit down again in the chair. "Margaret?" he said, glancing around the room. He looked at Carter, who shrugged. After a pause, the man took in a deep breath and asked Carter if he had his camera in the car. Then he asked for another photograph.

Carter jogged out to his car, returning with the box to find the man sitting on the chair again, eyes closed and forehead damp. His shirt collar was loosened. Hearing the photographer return, he opened his eyes and nodded. "Ready when you are."

"Right here again?"

"Right here again."

He returned again a week later with the new photograph. In this one, the woman was sitting on the floor directly in front of the man, cross-legged and looking at the camera. She was still in the tank top and sweats.

The man examined the photograph and let out a breath that had probably been withheld for the entire week. "It's mine," he said.

"How can you tell?"

"I told her to look at the camera if it was mine."

Carter would have chosen something other than looking at the camera, because the picture was on the freaky side.

"Now what do I do?"

Carter didn't say anything. He started examining the living room, wishing he could leave but still waiting for his check. There was a canvas print of the man with his wife that had evidently been taken prior to her death. She was a trim woman, with an easy smile and careful hair. The man looked much the same, dressed in a comfortable-looking button-down shirt, collar loosened, and black slacks.

He considered asking the man what he had been dreaming about say, a couple months ago, but he didn't want to intrude on the man's sex life. He already knew enough, thank you very much.

He received his check and soon found himself making a monthly visit to the man's house so they could track the pregnancy. Each time he went, the man had bought some new piece of furniture or painted a room, doing what he could to prepare for a baby he wasn't sure was going to be alive. When Carter suggested the baby probably wouldn't need a gate to keep it from falling down the stairs, the man said, "Do you have any idea how terribly difficult it is to raise a child? A human child is hard enough! But think of Margaret giving birth when she is in this condition! As many ghosts as you see every day, Mr. Hall, I assure you that a pregnant ghost is not normal!"

After that, Carter went back to keeping his thoughts to himself.

A few months later, he got a phone call in the middle of the night. "It's coming!"

"The end?"

"The baby!"

"How can you tell?" he kneaded his eyes with his left hand.

"Margaret told me!"

"I thought she couldn't talk to you."

"Just get over here."

Carter rolled out of bed, stretched, and yawned his way to his car. The man's house, when he got there, was completely lit up. Classical music drifted out the front door. The man sat in his accustomed chair, facing a couch and coaching the air. It was undoubtedly too early for this sort of thing.

"Get me some water from the kitchen," the man said without looking up as Carter let himself in the open front door.

He filled up a glass and silently handed it to the man, who shook his head and returned it. "In a bowl."

So he scavenged through the cupboards to find a bowl, listening to the man tell his deceased wife that she should keep breathing, reminding her that he wasn't going anywhere, that they were in this together.

He brought the bowl over along with a rag. "How is she doing?"

"Oh, she's hanging in there like a champ. I love you so much, darling. Almost there!"

The man tilted his head to the side for a moment, then yelled, "PUSH!" He reached beneath his chair to retrieve a blanket, thrusting it at Carter. "Keep breathing, baby."

Carter sat on the floor, holding the blanket, watching this man assure the couch that she was a fabulous woman, that everything was going fine. He decided against bringing up the idea of possible complications that would normally result in a C-section.

It was 5 a.m., still pitch black outside, when the man moved to sit on the couch beside the area where Carter presumed Margaret was sitting. He was smiling broadly. After a moment, he whispered for Carter to get his camera.

A week later, he brought the man the photograph. He looked like the only source of life in the otherwise empty home, but in the picture, a happy man was sitting on a couch, arm splayed out to surround the shoulders of a tired-looking woman who was holding a naked baby girl.

The man thanked Carter for his services, asked him to come again in another month, and said they were going to call the baby Janice.

Putsy (Another writing-prompt response in my Writing Excuses Course. Season 3)

Cheri was on good terms with her truck. It wasn't so much that they had been through a lot together as that they had not been through anything together, and she was giving it the benefit of the doubt. It was a faded bronze, with a leather interior that was already starting to get a little dusty from Cheri's drives around the ranch every day. Much to her father's chagrin, she had named it Putsy, dangling a rainbow lei from the rear view mirror to mark the vehicle as her own.

"Putsy's a name you give a lame dog," he had said under his breath when she first drove up to the ranch with it. She hadn't told her parents she was buying the thing, but then, she hadn't told them when she had gone to the DMV to get her license, either. It wasn't that they were against any of it, it's just that they had a lot more on their minds than their only daughter being allowed to drive on a highway. Of course they had taught her to drive around the ranch, that had happened years ago, but after that, they didn't put too much thought into the legality of her driving.

She didn't blame them. The ranch was huge, and since that school trip when some idiot had lost a couple of deadly snakes on their land, they had enough on their plate trying to keep all the livestock alive. Because of course they weren't two males or two females. No, they had to be a mating pair.

For all these years, though, Cheri had refused to let the snakes destroy her world. That's one reason she had bought Putsy: She would be able to run errands around the ranch without worrying about her horse being bitten (it had happened twice, and the hike back was a doozy) or having to borrow her dad's truck, leaving him in danger of having to make that hike.





I stop this piece of fiction here to explain why it isn't any good. I wrote it last night while at work and realized while driving home that it is all exposition, even the piece of dialogue I included. Exposition is the term used for any time when nothing is happening. The writer is explaining things. I just spent four paragraphs explaining about the truck and the ranch, and while I was able to include a bunch of detail--and even a conflict!--nothing happened the entire time. That is no good for the beginning of a story, because a reader wants to watch events. They want a story. She drove the truck to a certain ravine, for instance, and it looked like this and she saw such and such. Even if it is passive action like I just described, it is action.

Exposition does have its place, but rarely are large chunks of it justified, and especially not at the beginning of a story. It is not engaging, simply put. Now, this doesn't mean that exposition is the Big Bad Wolf. It does have its place; just know that that place is about as large as a classroom lecture in the life of a teenager. The longer a story, the more room for it. If placed at the beginning of a story, it needs to be kept to a minimum. Four paragraphs, Elizabeth-from-yesternight, is not a minimum. Get it together.

Please allow me to try again, and maybe you will see a difference and know what I'm talking about.





"Putsy's a name you give a lame dog," Cheri's dad said, eying the bronze-colored truck she had just parked in the dirt in front of him.

"Well, since I've never had a dog, I figured I needed to use the name somewhere," she said. She pulled her hair into a ponytail to arrest it from the wind, using a bobby pin to get rid of the last few strands--the "wings," as her mom called them.

"Dog would've been more useful."

Cheri pretended to think about that for a moment, then shrugged and shot him a grin before closing the driver's side door behind her and coming to stand beside him. He was holding a map of the ranch, marked up with a green sharpie in broad strokes and circles. True to her dad's way of thinking, the creeks were labeled "Creek," the wooded areas were labeled "Trees," and the fence lines were marked by two parallel lines. Cheri was sure that if they had had a dog, the poor thing would not have been named Putsy, lame or not.

"I was thinkin' we would start here," he said, gesturing toward an area Cheri knew to be a rocky field. "Then head north, probably, along the tree line, and see where that gets us." He paused, then said, "But leave Putsy here. No reason to ruin the ozone."

Cheri rolled her eyes for his benefit and got into the truck, driving it back onto the road to park. Soon she was back with her dad, getting into his dusty Chevy and grabbing his map to give it yesterday's updates, which she had forgotten to write down before heading into town that morning to buy Putsy. She marked a dry creek bed with the date, then on the back of the map copied the date and wrote, "NO SNAKES FOUND." She checked their "killed" tally at the bottom, something she did every day even though neither of them had any idea how many of the venomous things there were around, to see remind herself they were nearly at 125. It had taken them a couple years to get that many, and she was starting to think the chore would never end. Much as her dad wouldn't admit it, they both knew she had good reasons for buying a truck of her own, seeing as their horses were no longer reliable transportation around the snake-infested ranch.

Her dad drove slowly, and they both kept an eye out for anything that suggested the snakes had infiltrated anywhere nearby. Their best way of telling was to detect the smell the snakes gave off, but on particularly windy days, that could be misleading. So instead, Cheri was keeping an eye on the birds. Where there were birds, there were no snakes. The birds had long learned to stay away from them. Unfortunately, the ranch's livestock had not, and that was the problem.

They had tried traps, poison, even animal control, but nothing seemed to work as well as just hunting them down and killing them as soon as they could find them. Cheri and her dad--and the hired help, whenever they were handy--went over the entire ranch every month, using a couple hours every day to look, hunt, kill. The carcasses were always burned, following some unspoken rule that they weren't to be used in any way or buried.

When they got to the field, her dad stopped the car and they got the guns out of the back. Each also had a knife on hand, just in case the devil was too close to shoot.

Cheri laughed inwardly as she and her dad stood back to back and walked away from each other, showdown-style, scrutinizing the ground in all directions. About-face at the trees, check the air for the stench and the skies for the birds. No birds.

They had been at it for a half hour when she heard a shot from across the field. Nodding to herself, she continued onward, stepping over a lichen-covered rock and trying not to make any noise in the thick rubber boots she was wearing as protection from a possible attack.

When she reached the middle of the field and prepared for another about-face, she realized she couldn't see her dad.

All desire for quiet left and she started yelling for all she was worth, running clumsily toward his side of the field and looking in every direction.

Rule No. 1 while snake hunting: Don't make noise.
Rule No. 2 while snake hunting: Break Rule No. 1 the instant your partner goes missing.
Rule No. 3 while snake hunting: Never lose your cool, or your weapon(s).

By the time Cheri reached the other side of the field, where her dad should have been, she had successfully broken rules one and three. She had dropped her gun in stupidity and panic, and her knife, well, who knows. She only realized it was gone when she saw a snake where her dad should have been and reached for it.

The snake was staring at her.

It was coiling its body, raising its head, staring at her. The screaming had done the opposite of scaring it away; it had attracted its undivided attention.

Cheri reached down slowly for a rock, forcing herself to maintain the eye contact. Once her hand touched a rock, though, she could tell it was buried in the ground and not handy as a weapon. Her next course of action was to scream more, because there was no hope of outrunning the snake. So she started screaming at it.

"You! Snake! Hey ugly! That's right, I'm talking to you! You got anything to say back? Or are you just going to stay there?"

It edged closer, tilting its head to one side and, she could have sworn it, smiling.

...To be continued (possibly).

Writing Excuses course, response to writing prompt from Season 1, Episode 17

Disclaimer: This is writing practice. Second disclaimer: I wrote this to go with Week 1 of my Writing Excuses course. I wrote it by hand, because my computer is having issues, and that's why it's shorter. I'm not sure why it took me this long to post it. The writing prompt was the first sentence.



Barry knew his mumbling was going to get him killed someday. At one point, he had actually been banking on it, but so far his expectations had never been met. He was still coming to terms with it.

So he took to self-therapy, drawing stick figure renderings of his subconscious while sitting in the back room of his chilly house -- chilly because it was almost perpetually shaded by th high canyon walls on either side and because he purposefully kept the thermostat low out of habit. Whenever he wanted to warm up, Barry would shower. This meant he showered at least twice per day.

The town was also surprised he was not dead yet, in short. Barry had the misfortune of living in an
easygoing small town where his mumbling was shrugged off as an eccentricity and kids would sneak into his house on a dare to turn up the thermostat. No one who managed to catch a glimpse of his stick figure sketches thought much of them and the gossip did not go far beyond Barry possessing a deplorable amount of artistic skill.

When he finally did die (true to his lifelong supposition, his mumbling led to unfortunate carelessness near a cliff edge), with no will and his only unfinished business the frozen chicken on his counter that was as likely to thaw as it was to begin breathing, the town's mayor instituted a yard sale and auction of his worldly possessions.

Barry's porch looked like an art gallery, with dozens of rough sketches on all sorts of paper propped up against the siding, the porch swing, the railing, and the few easels the town owned. Most of the drawings were done with pen, none contained speech bubbles, and people only bought the ones they wanted to spare everyone the shock of seeing (this included, but was not limited to, Mrs. Halloweigh purchasing the sketch of a man urinating on Mr. George's dog).

The house itself was put up for sale, largely because no one in town needed a second house just a mile from their own (excepting, it would seem, Mrs. Halloweigh, who would visit it regularly to entertain Mr. George, and then always at dusk to be joined by him some time after).

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...William Faulkner

I have a handful of memories from the sixth grade, and most of them have to do with my English class. I had seven classes each day, the same lineup, and for some reason two of those were English classes. Whoever decided to split reading from writing was partially insane and partially amazing, because I so was not complaining about having to go to English twice per day. I had the same teacher and the same classmates both times. It really was one class split into two periods.

In this class, we spent some time quietly writing each day. I was working on a medieval story involving a knight and some poison he invented to take revenge on someone or other, and I remember looking up at some point, trying to think of something completely random to put in the story, and my eyes settled on the poster-portrait of William Faulkner near the classroom door. So William Faulkner made it into the story. I had absolutely no idea who the guy was. Turns out he was an author, something I learned a few years later.

This reminds me of the poster. Maybe it's the same image?
Not sure. It's been a long time.

I finally read something of his. As I Lay Dying made my to-read list because I had a college professor who regularly brought up the book and thought it was a masterpiece. Also, I seem to remember I was seeing it elsewhere. You know when you hear about something and suddenly it's everywhere? I'm pretty sure that happened.

As for what I thought of it: Immediately after finishing the book, I thought, "Oh good, it's over.  ...Did I really just think that?!" Following that, I went online and looked up a summary for the book to make sure I hadn't misunderstood the major plot points, because Faulkner definitely does not hang road signs on them. Good news: I hadn't.

Faulkner presents this story in a way that if you aren't paying strict attention, you have no idea what is going on. The writing is minimalist and written in what people call stream of consciousness. I think they're wrong and it's actually just first person with a talkative narrator each time, except for when the narrator isn't being talkative. Imagine a 5-year-old telling you a story, and how they will repeat themselves until they get it right, add in unnecessary detail, and completely skip parts, and then add a southern dialect and word choice to it. That's what it is like to read this book. Ish. It takes a lot of skill to write like this, actually, so that is one thing I'll give Faulkner props in. I'll have to talk myself into reading another book of his if I want to find more reasons to give him props.

The one thing I really want to tell Faulkner is that people cannot possibly be this stupid, because the father in this piece was straight up asinine. But I'm afraid he may prove me wrong, and that's something about this world I would rather not be aware of.

This is not a book to read for fun unless you are a literary fiction junky. Please note the difference between literary and genre fiction. Genre fiction is anything with a label: science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, horror, mystery, etc. Literary fiction is everything else, so long as it is written well. I don't think you can really publish in literary fiction if the writing is well done, though. Examples of contemporary-ish literary fiction you might have heard of (you'll have to give me a moment to think on this one): The Great Gatsby, The Kite Runner, Life of Pi. I had to cheat and use an Internet search to jog my mind.

On the upside, I now understand that English professor (the one who recommended it) a whole lot better. Like, everything makes sense now. About him. As for the book, I understood and could probably analyze its literary merit if asked to, but I'd rather not.

Awner the Gardener

Second week of the Writing Excuses course. I wrote this in response to the prompt to create an alien and write something from their perspective.

Awner could feel the Earth moving. He had always been able to feel its gentle spin, and he felt the push to be a comforting presence, the gentle hand of the planet itself. This is one reason he was so focused on keeping the environment alive and well. The other reason is that he was the gardener. It’s not like tulips plant themselves, after all.

Okay, they do. But that’s because Awner talked them into it all those years ago, and believe me, it took an awful lot of talking. After the tulips gave in, though, the other plants followed suit soon after. Couple hundred years, tops.

Every now and then, Awner would sit out and watch the stars. He had a favorite spot on the ice near the North Pole, a place where he could see the sky spin in circles. Humans like to “stop and smell the roses.” When Awner had reached his fill of roses--after all, they are kind of stressful to be around, what with all the thorns and neediness--he would stop and watch the skies. He had created constellations long before the idea of sky-stories were popularized. There was Gigero, the swimmer, lover of oceans and coral. Ispole, originator of color and scent. Terinoq, sculpter of canyons and caves. His favorite, of course, was Paerna, painter of the skies.

That is probably because Paerna was his mother, though.

He was the last of them, the only remaining child of Paerna, painter of the skies and creator of worlds. That was the added epithet people back home had liked to give her, but Awner’s mother had never accepted it as truth, seeing as she would only take what was already there and make it habitable and beautiful. “Renovator of worlds” did not have the same ring to it, though, and she never could shed the inaccurate compliment. She had better things to do with her time, anyway, while she had been alive.

Awner always ended his trips to the North with a shake of his head over his utter failure to make the ice give off any sort of plant life. It was ridiculous, really. He never managed to get the simple-minded ice to understand that there are plants that survive purely off water. Kelp, for example. But then the ice would argue about the animals that could get to it, and it refused to believe that animals help plants. He always gave up after that, because it took way too long to properly explain ecosystems. Water has its own system; he had learned that it stubbornly refused to learn about any other. Whether this came from conceit or spite, Awner was never sure.

He had not assigned a star pattern to himself, though he did think the Milky Way--as it has been named and he came to call it as well--resembled him when he was traveling.

The rest of the time, he thought he looked more like a potato. Which was fine by him, since potatoes were one of the most sensible plants out there. Down to earth, willing to do whatever it took to survive. He wished sometimes that he could take plants on trips with him. Maybe the ice up north would have listened to a real potato, instead of a stumpy creature resembling a potato with a bad attitude, as he had once been described by a human child. His whole family had resembled potatoes, so he had not thought much of it until one of them, and he couldn’t quite remember who, pointed out that the humans they had bred looked much different from themselves. Smooth, with light fuzz, given to forming soft shells around themselves as protection from the environment. Different, is what he thought at first. Now, he thought of himself as different. The change probably happened when his family had died off, leaving him the only one, with no way to return home and only the Earth’s spin to keep him company.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...James McBride

For what may have been the first time in my life, I read a nonfiction book that was not assigned and was not solely about religion. I read it because it sounded fascinating. I heard of it through Goodreads.

The book was The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother. My main reaction is amazement that James McBride's mother let him get it published. She was still alive at the time of its publication about two decades ago.

The Color of Water is two stories; it tells the story of James's life growing up and his mother's life while she was growing up. For James, this means having 11 siblings, living in the Projects, coping with the death of a step-father, and learning that hanging out with drunks really isn't the best lifestyle. For his mother, this means being sexually molested by her father (who is also abusive to her crippled mother), working in the family store, finding Christianity (I wasn't planning on this element, so no saying I still picked a book about religion), and trying to make a life for herself in Harlem. There are no boring chapters in this book.

However, there is a part near the end that I skimmed because it was a listing of where her children all were at the time of publication; each one of them has a degree (more than one has a doctorate) and is working in a respected position.

The one thing both stories definitely have in common, to get back to that train of thought, is that both James and his mother struggled with cultural identity. His mother was raised a Jew in a discriminatory sense, meaning that she wasn't even allowed to enter a "Gentile chapel," including when she was having her high school graduation ceremony. She married two black men, and she said she did so not only because she loved them, but she was able to love them because of how accepting she found the black community to be. It was her first husband who introduced her to Christianity, which was what helped her to put her past behind her. Actually, she put it so far behind her that until he was an adult, James did not know his mother's maiden name, much less who his relatives were. It wasn't that she was ignoring the family, either: His mother was disowned by the family at large. They even sat shiva for her, which means they washed their hands of her and acted as if she had literally died. As for James, he was always a bit ashamed of his mother while he was growing up. He thought she was awkward and white, which was embarrassing to him. Writing the book was his way of trying to reconcile the two halves of himself, his mother and the black side.

I need to quit going on and on about this book. Just read it for yourself, because it is wonderful.

One caveat: Don't read the book if you do not want some talk about drugs, crime (he confesses to some crimes he committed as a minor in here), molestation, or anything else along those lines. Nothing is graphic, and I think the language itself isn't vulgar, now that I think about it. It is tastefully done, but the content is there. Your call.

Someone, and I can't remember who or where I saw this, made a comment about the book and how it is like a mashup of The Color Purple and Cheaper by the Dozen. That person is wrong. First off, I started but couldn't stand to finish The Color Purple. It was too graphic for me. Also, just because it is about black people does not mean it is like The Color Purple. That's a cultural fallacy, if I may create a term, where society assumes that any book or movie or TV show that has mainly black characters must be about race, with The Color Purple being the epitome of black literature or something. Please realize this is a memoir. Black people can write memoirs, too. As for the Cheaper by the Dozen bit, having a lot of kids was a fact of the life he was telling. I'm sorry if you think it's unoriginal or beating some dead horse. NONFICTION. It's not like he was going to knock off one of his siblings. A large family is a part of life for some people. You keep yours small if you would rather. James's mom wanted a big family, looks like.

I'm done ranting now. The book was good. Go read it. I have no idea why it hasn't been made into a movie yet, because that movie would be incredible.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Charles Dickens

Update on my Writing Excuses course, before I launch into this review: I swear to you that I did the writing exercise and I did take notes. I'm having computer issues, meaning I need to buy a new hard drive. I've been able to listen using my iPad, but when it comes to typing and updating this blog, said iPad (I've named it Charlotte after the author of Jane Eyre) is incorrigible. In case you're wondering, I'm typing this up at my desk at work. It isn't the best solution, but it will do until I patch up Charlotte.

I consider Charles Dickens one of my writing heroes. I'd say he's a regular hero of mine, too, except he cheated on his wife and that just isn't cool. I think Oliver Twist may have been my first Dickens book. It is also my least favorite of his, and if it really was my first Dickens, it's a miracle I read another. I'm glad I did, though, because David Copperfield and Great Expectations are two of the best books I have ever read. Until this past week, I had not read A Tale of Two Cities. I'm pretty sure it was because I was afraid it would turn out to be another Oliver Twist, though I'm not sure why.

After reading a couple paragraphs, I was thinking, "Oh no, Charles Dickens, what have you done." I was reading it on my iPad, so I flipped over to the Internet to scope out other versions of the text just in case I had gotten a faulty copy. It turns out I hadn't. Am I the only person out there who cannot easily understand this?:

It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood.

I have a pretty good tolerance for outdated language, but I ended up having to tell myself that maybe it would get better. It did. Here's an excerpt from later in the book (an excerpt that highlights Dickens' narrative wit, something that makes him such an incredible author):

...the owl made a noise with very little resemblance in it to the noise conventionally assigned to the owl by men-poets. But it is the obstinate custom of such creatures hardly ever to say what is set down for them.

Another quote, because I thought it was brilliant:

"...Because he is lame, and consequently slow, they drive him with their guns — like this!"

He imitated the action of a man's being impelled forward by the butt-ends of muskets.

"As they descend the hill like madmen running a race, he falls. They laugh and pick him up again. His face is bleeding and covered with dust, but he cannot touch it; thereupon they laugh again. They bring him into the village; all the village runs to look; they take him past the mill, and up to the prison; all the village sees the prison gate open in the darkness of the night, and swallow him — like this!"

He opened his mouth as wide as he could, and shut it with a sounding snap of his teeth.

I mean, how many authors out there think to put in the gestures associated with talking (and then pull it off so well)? This is the sort of language and narration I associate with Charles Dickens. If you enjoyed those quotes, consider reading a book of his. I highly recommend them. Except for Oliver Twist.

As for A Tale of Two Cities, it literally is not about anyone in particular, but rather, a group of people. After reading a snippet from another review -- I read it while reading the book because I had a question but didn't want to stumble across any spoilers -- I started wondering which character is the protagonist. The review (I can't remember where it was otherwise I would link to it) said Carton was the main character, but I disagree. My theory for the lack of a protagonist: Charles Dickens was one of the original television screenwriters. His books did not come out as books; rather, they came out in serials, meaning you would wait for the ship to come into harbor with the next chapter onboard. People would reportedly wait on the docks for the ships carrying the latest Charles Dickens, he was that popular. Seen as a literary television show, A Tale of Two Cities makes perfect sense. There are scenes or chapters that do focus on one particular character, or one aspect of the storyline. Just like in TV dramas today, these chapters come together like episodes to form a coherent storyline. Who is Grey's Anatomy about? To be honest, I have no idea because I don't watch the show, but I'm pretty sure it's about nobody in particular. It is about a group of people and each character takes the spotlight at different moments.

This also explains why I was able to read it in spurts and it was a page-turner until that "episode" was over, at which point I was just fine putting it down and doing something more productive with my life, like the yoga I'm calling exercise.

Oh, and getting in a tussle with the rosebush in my front yard.

That all said, and it took me two shifts at work to say it, I do recommend this book. Glance over the first bit and then start paying attention once he quits being weird. Don't forget you're reading a TV show, either, and do me the favor of letting me know if you agree with that approach.