How to Write a Letter

The day I tried to Google "average length of a letter" and found only results related to cover letters and font sizes, I realized people don't write letters anymore. I knew it was rare, but this was something else.

So let me tell you about letter writing and maybe you'll give it a try. Everyone loves receiving letters in the mail.

Some logistics:

• Putting an address on the letter itself is optional.
• Putting the date on the letter itself is also optional.
• Salutations (e.g. Dear ___,) can be anything you want, or even skipped altogether.
• Sign it at the bottom ... but make sure it's legible, or else the envelope makes it clear the letter came from you. Signing it tells the person who you are and that you are finished.
• P.S., or post script, was created back in the days before erasers or the delete key. They were used if you had forgotten something but had already added your signature at the bottom. Not really needed anymore unless you are joking around or it's some stylistic choice.
• As far as I can tell, there is no average letter length. Write until you finish up. When my husband was serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I tended to write him ten-page letters. I've also written my share of one-page letters.
• Use paragraphs. It makes reading easier.
• Doodling in the margins is fine, depending on who the recipient is.
• Letters can be sent through the mail, email, Facebook, or any other way you feel like.

With those things out of the way, how do you decide what to put in your letter? Some ideas:

• Is there a purpose to the letter? Make sure to include it. Sometimes it's easy to forget.
• What have you been filling your life with lately? Hobbies, work, family, vacations, etc.
• Tell some stories about what you've been experiencing. Include a funny one if possible.
• Think aloud: Write about what's been on your mind, ideas-wise or worries-wise.
• Ask questions. No letter is complete without them, and it makes a reply easier. Reply to any questions they asked you, if their letter came before yours.
• What would your recipient in particular like to hear about? Satiate their curiosity.
• Anything else you feel like talking about.

Writing letters really isn't much trouble, it just takes a bit of time and thought. Here is an example of a letter (abridged) I wrote to a missionary friend of mine while I was in college a few years ago:

December 11, 2012

My Dearest Sister Rachel,

I figured that if I write this now, it might just reach you before Christmas. So merry Christmas, Rachel! I hope you are keeping warm and doing well. When you get a chance, you should let me know how Russia, the mission, your companion, and everything else is going.

I looked, and last time I wrote you was about a month ago. Thankfully (or not?) nothing incredibly important has occurred since then. Nothing to beat Shelby coming home, anyway. My last update from her (a week ago?) was that she is doing well. She is happy to be with family, that’s for sure. Other news…my roommate, Sarah, has had a series of surgeries and still isn’t done with doctors, but she dropped out this semester, so she doesn’t have to worry about schoolwork. She is in good spirits, and it amazes me. I think I would be a nervous wreck if my body was as messed up as hers is. ...

It’s Finals Week right now. I only have one real final; the others are just the last test of the class and the last is reciting a poem in French. That last one is what I get to do tomorrow morning. In my poetry (English; I took two poetry classes this semester) class, we had our biggest project around Thanksgiving. We put together portfolios of our best poetry and wrote an essay about three of our own poems and three of someone else’s. ...

Everyone keeps asking me if I have any big papers to write, but this semester has actually been pretty tame when it comes to papers. The most intense paper I had to write was actually for Honors credit in my Human Development course. My sister ... gave me access to some of her teenage journal entries and I compared them with a sample of my own, to see how we compared while in that phase of development. To be more precise, I was paying attention to how we started to develop a vocational identity – how we made money, how/if we balanced employment with school, and how we worked toward a future career. There is some debate amongst developmentalists right now about whether or not teenagers should be employed while attending high school. Some say it is good for them, because it expands their social circle and gives them professional/workforce experience. Others say employment inhibits their ability to perform to their full potential in school. ... When I finished, the paper was 20 pages long, including the title page, abstract, and reference page. I wrote an abstract simply because the paper was getting to be so long. Honestly, I enjoyed writing it. I think I even forgot about the time and stayed up until 2 a.m. working on it. I think that’s a sign that I have chosen to do the right thing with my life. If you forget time because you are doing what you love, then you are in the right spot. It wasn’t that I was enjoying the subject; I was just enjoying writing. ...

I’m going to go to bed now, and will write more tomorrow, I hope. Love you!

Love, Elizabeth

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...T.S. Lowe

I had the privilege a year ago to be the principal editor of T.S. Lowe's now-published book Out of Duat, a historical fantasy for a middle school-aged audience. The book involves a young Egyptian pharaoh, a dangerous cult, the cult's slightly insane priestess and an accidental time traveler from South Dakota, with some zombies and Egyptian gods thrown in for good measure.

It is a book of parallels, and that, I think, is one of its greatest strengths. Another is how clear it is just what each character wants (the conflict). Here's the lowdown:

Hath - As a young girl, she watches her father killed by the Egyptians, then learns how to be a priestess to the god of death from her mother. She and her people want revenge, but there's just one problem: She's fallen in love with the Pharaoh, the son of the man who killed her dad.

Xius - A young pharaoh with an awful temper who wants to prove himself. He wants to marry for love but is being pressured by the court to marry sooner than he is ready. He hasn't even found someone to love yet. On top of that, he doesn't know what to do about the absolutely annoying, supposed time traveler.

Annette - A teenager from a broken family and South Dakota who can only talk to Xius, because he has a magic amulet that allows him to understand her language. She was enslaved upon her arrival and is not doing the better for it, even though everyone keeps telling her how grateful she ought to be that Xius didn't have her killed outright.

Set - Xius's chief adviser, Set is a recent widower. His wife was killed by the cultists and he misses her terribly--so much so, in fact, that he is willing to make any deal just for the chance to bring her back.

There are other characters too, of course, but these are our plot-drivers. The parallels are created by them, too. Hath and Annette play off each other, as do Xius and Set. We also have an Egyptian wife who was killed by cultists, and a cultist father who was killed by Egyptians. There are others, but I invite you to look for them as you read.

Lowe knows how to craft a story, and for her it is all about conflict, which is rooted in character. Did you notice how every single character I mentioned desired something? Hath wants revenge and love. Xius wants to prove himself. Annette wants to survive. Set wants his wife back.

These desires change as the characters progress, which is both character development and how the plot moves along. Situations change people, and people can change situations.

Even after reading it so many times over that I'm sick of it, I still recommend this book. It is fun, intelligent and easy to read.

Shooting Stars

A young man once was on a journey through the forested mountains where the elks and salmon live, and because he was hungry, he climbed the tallest tree he could find. It was a pine tree, and its sap and bits of bark and needles stuck to his hands as he climbed, the scent filling the air around him.

It was a slow climb to the top, and once he was there he paused to look at the land around him, at the sweeping river and the spotted canopy of trees. He saw a hawk's shadow gliding across a meadow and raised his gaze to the sky to find it. Once he found the hawk, he kept an eye on it while pulling out an arrow and his bow, made special for the journey and not yet used. It was a creamy brown and smooth as a stone that has sat in the river for many years.

Stringing the bow, the young man took his aim, following the circling path of the hawk as it flew. Just when it was about to fly elsewhere, he let go of the bowstring. His arrow did not strike.

Perhaps it was on purpose, because the young man had already come to love the height of the tree and, hungry as he was, he was loathe to descend. In fact, the young man wanted to climb higher.

So he found an even taller tree and scampered down the one he was in to climb the other. The wind began to blow, but that did not stop him; it only added exhilaration to the climb. He felt one with the forest as his body and the tree limbs all swung every which way in the building storm.

At the top of the second tree, he rode out the winds, laughing as the tree danced and his hair was blown every which way. When the rain began to fall, he held to the tree with his legs, throwing his arms wide and tilting his head back to drink it in. The water quenched his thirst and drenched his body and he was one with the tree, high as a hawk and touching the sky.

When the storm ended and the clouds cleared, he saw the mountain and wished to be on its peak, higher than the trees. So he scampered down the second tree and ascended the mountain, eating berries as he went and skipping through the slower inclines. He relished the challenge of scaling the boulders when they came, his foot slipping now and then on the damp surface but always pushing upward.

Having gained the top of the mountain, the young man looked down on the world beneath and joy led him to laughter. The sun was just setting and he could see the long shadows, hear the crickets, and smell the rich earth. He had been told by the elders of his village to make camp for the night when it came, but his eyes sought the heavens and he wished to go higher, to race with the winds and follow the moon across the sky.

So the young man found another tree, this one still taller than the others, for it was atop the high mountain. And in the dark, he climbed. His bow was across his back with his quiver, all but forgotten as fingers found branches and feet found footholds to hold his weight. He climbed higher and higher, until he was sure he must have reached the top, but there was still more to climb and he continued.

Higher and higher, until he reached the stars. The young man nocked an arrow and aimed it high; it created a graceful arc full of light as it ascended for but a moment and then fell down to the earth far below.

With no way down, and no desire to return, that is where the young man still is. Every now and then he lets an arrow fly out of sheer joy, for he is where the winds, the moon, and the stars are, and during the day he can climb the clouds still higher.

Do you ever visit a place that just feels like it has a story? My husband and I wandered a bit through Boise National Forest this fall and this story came to me while we were sitting on a mountainside overlooking a valley. It just felt right.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Mitch Albom

I just finished Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie, a book I picked up because my in-laws had it on a bookshelf. In retrospect, it was a relevant book for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Tuesdays with Morrie is a best-selling nonfiction book about Albom's experience learning about life and death from an old sociology professor of his, Morrie Schwartz. I read it in two days, with plenty of pause time, and so I would not say it is a hard read or a dense one. It is simple; but then, I am sure Morrie would argue that is because life is simple.

Before I critique this, let me say I enjoyed the read. I looked up Morrie while reading and am waiting for a better time to watch the TV segments on him that were recorded before his death.

The writing is, as I said, simple and easy to understand. There are aphorisms, stories and humorous bits. As mentioned in Writing Tools, that how-to-write book I am going to discuss (can we say this begins the discussion?), Albom employs short sentences, with an uncomplicated structure, to tell truths. Short and to the point makes people think of it as true and indisputable, Writing Tools says, if I remember right without having it in front of me (I am still at a brother-in-law's, typing this on my phone as my toddler nephew bumbles around the room).

Take the last portion of the first paragraph as a sample:

The last class of my old professor's life took place once a week in his house, by a window in the study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink leaves. The class met on Tuesdays. It began after breakfast. The subject was The Meaning of Life. It was taught from experience.

This device was used throughout the book, but usually not in quick succession like it was here. You get the idea, though. It worked well for a story trying to tell simple truths. It made them instantly more accessible and acceptable. I never tried to argue with him.

My primary question about the book is how much of it is fudged. When writing creative nonfiction such as this, small details are often fictional. The color of shirt Morrie is wearing, what the weather was like, that sort of thing. Two instances seemed a bit too clean-cut to me: One is when Morrie pulls out a plant to look at while talking about life and how everyone dies. Useful prop to visualize things for a reader, eh? The other is that while Morrie is dying and wants love and attention, there just so happens to be a parallel character -- Albom's brother. He is also terminally ill but does not want any attention whatsoever, completely ignoring all phone calls. Until after Morrie dies, of course, when he finally allows contact. It's just a little too convenient for truth, don't you think? But maybe it is true. Who would be heartless enough to lie like that for cash?

My primary discontent with the book is it doesn't teach life lessons, it tells them. Life lessons are not taught through aphorisms, but through experiences. I suspect this book could only change a life that is ready for it. If life has been trying to teach the same lessons it tells, this might incite the moment of epiphany. Otherwise, I bet people come away from it like I did: "Well, that was a nice, uplifting read." No life changes, no teary phone calls, no new resolutions.

This is why for self-help or inspirational, I prefer fiction. It is easier to experience lessons that way. Easier to write them so that the reader becomes immersed. It can be done in nonfiction, but Albom didn't manage it.

Identity crisis

I had a small identity crisis a few weeks ago.

Ever since I was a child learning how to write, I have written stories. The first one I recall was about a fish who wanted to save a spider who was caught somewhere on land. Another used my uncle's pig for inspiration - I don't remember what it was about, but I know it was titled "Robert the Pig and His Sweater."

From the beginning, it was stories. Fictional stories, that is. Sure, I kept a journal, but I never considered that writing practice. I actively wanted to never work for a newspaper. I wanted to be a novelist.

College hit, and I wanted a job where they would pay me to write, or at least edit, so I applied for Accent editor and Opinion editor without knowing the job description for either. I just knew I did NOT want to be a reporter. At all.

The entire time I worked for the student newspaper, I did not write an article, not a single one, and I worked there for three and a half years.

I left college with the goal of finding a job where I would use my degree, and I ended up at a newspaper again.

I have since written numerous articles. I am not technically a reporter, but I do report. A few weeks ago, I had the realization that I am a journalist and I mainly write nonfiction. As I said, it was a moment of crisis, and I'm not exaggerating.

Who am I as a writer?, I wanted to know. It seemed like this blog and some meager scraps of other writing were all I had to cling to for my "fiction writer" dream.

To end this crisis, I did a couple things. 1) I told myself that people love my nonfiction writing at the newspaper. It makes people happy, even though it may not seem grand. Or fictional. 2) I am now looking at my job as a second school of writing. I am learning a new form and gaining practice and skills in writing that will transfer over when I am finished with newspapers.

I also read yet another how-to-write book, this one called "Writing Tools" and written by Roy Peter Clark. I finished it recently (a good newspaper word that makes something see timely even when it is starting to overripen) and will share my notes with you over the next few weeks, along with explanations to flesh them out.

P.S. - Being a journalist isn't THAT bad, is it?

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...K.W. Negaard II

I read Kenny Negaard's book "Clarence: Adventures in the Great Wood" for my work. I didn't have high hopes for it, mainly because I'm skeptical of local writers. But I was wrong. This is actually a pretty good book.

For a cool backstory on the writer, read the story I wrote for the Idaho Press-Tribune. In brief, Negaard served in the military, wrote the book, then experienced extreme PTSD and landed himself in jail. He thinks that's where God wanted him to be, though, and he wouldn't have had it any other way. He's out of jail now and doing well. The story is pretty cool, so you should give it a read.

"Clarence" is about a caterpillar who becomes best friends with a robin, Tilly, and they decide to be roommates. They find a home, meet people and wait for the day when Clarence will get his own wings, but in the meantime, he flies around on Tilly. It has a bittersweet ending and is a sweet, religious-in-tone story. I honestly think young children would enjoy it if they are in the I-just-started-reading-chapter-books stage and love animals.

By "religious-in-tone," I mean there are frequent references to the Creator and how He watches over and has provided for all of us. It isn't preachy, though there are moments where spiritual stories are shared.

The writing is okay, not necessarily impressive, but I was impressed with Negaard's grasp of story structure (especially since I struggle with it so much). There is a first climax (finding a home), build up, and a second, larger climax, along with adventures along the way. The conflict for the story starts as being "I'm young and don't know anything" and morphs into "Someday, Clarence will get his wings. What will they be like? How does the transformation happen?" There are mentor characters, a frog and a raccoon, and squirrels provide comedic relief. All the elements to make a story are there, and I actually asked him if he had any writing training. He doesn't, but he has figured out the idea of having a writing schedule, which many non-serious writers don't attain (and thus they don't write anything).

He is planning on turning it into a series, with different books starring different characters, so keep an eye out if you purchase this book and enjoy it.

A study in conflict

I've read a couple essays/articles about conflict today, and here is what I gained:

Conflict is about character.

I always put it in its own category, but maybe it is just a facet of a character. C.S. Lakin, an author who also wrote this essay on conflict, says conflict is shaped by the things a character values. Take that thing away or endanger it, then build a story as the character struggles to regain it.

Examples:

Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat: Little boy wanted house to be clean and chores done before Mom gets home. This is challenged by the appearance of the cat, who proceeds to ruin everything.

Crisis moment.

Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre: Lady wants to be righteous and have worth. This is almost fulfilled by a man who falls in love with her ... except he's already married. Also challenged by the perception of her aunt.

Roald Dahl's The BFG: Giant runt doesn't believe in eating humans. This is challenged every day as he watches the other giants go out to eat them.

Point made? As I said, I had always thought of conflict as separate from character. It turns out that you grow a character, and then a conflict comes from/in relation to the character.

So what did my Settled character value? ... It seems he valued his marriage, and he enjoys normalcy instead of lunacy. Apparently, then, the conflict should have been something threatening his marriage. The lunacy thing was a bit of a sideshow, really.

The next question on my mind was when to introduce conflict. Lakin said to do it as soon as possible ... unless you are laying a foundation for the conflict to stand on. I once wrote a short story where the entire introduction was focused on solidifying the relationship between the main character and her younger sister. Then I killed off the younger sister and made my main character deal with it (she didn't do so well).

So note to self: Unless I am purposefully setting up the conflict, it needs to be introduced as soon as possible. There needs to be something to carry the reader through the story.

And a P.S. to that note: Remember to at least have two levels of conflict: Outward and inward. This adds depth to both the conflict and the storyline.

I also thought this was worth noting:

Certain genres and age groups will limit or restrict the type and depth of conflict the writer can explore. Special interest publications allow the writer to target a more specific conflict. YA novels and stories will limit the degree to which you can explore sexual conflicts and physical violence, but will heighten the importance of emotional conflict. A primarily male or female audience will vary in the type and style of conflict. A Christian publisher is more likely to focus on internal conflicts, rather than physical or sexual conflicts. (http://www.fictionfactor.com/articles/conflict.html)

Back to Writing Excuses! Middles.

Time to learn about middles. If you'll remember, I wrote a post a few weeks ago saying my story Settled had a poor storyline. In particular, it was conflict-challenged and the story did not progress well because of it. I said I would research and learn more so as to improve.

That means I returned to the Writing Excuses podcast today, listening to this session in particular. It's about middles. I have always had issues with middles, and it's time to resolve that.

The main takeaway was that a middle should be full of try-fail cycles. The conflict is introduced in the beginning, then the protagonist spends their time trying to resolve it. Just before the end, matters get even worse and the protagonist tries one last time. This allows the end to feel more triumphant.

In essence, the middle is the struggle.

For example, The Odyssey. Odysseus stops at many islands, trying to get home. He tries and fails and tries again, continuing onward--and just when he is home free, he realizes he has to fight at home, too. Note that he loses men left and right and he never emerges from a scene unscathed. Every action should have an effect on the storyline. Let there be consequences. The middle shapes the end.

Let's say Settled had a conflict of one of Mel's projects getting out of hand and one of the neighbors calls the cops on them. Insert some tension by Jeff not telling Mel it had happened, and the middle starts when Jeff goes to the station to talk it over. There, instead of smoothing things over, he finds out this was the fifth or even tenth time they've been reported, so they are being fined. He doesn't have the money on him, so he says he will figure something out, please give me a week. That is try and fail cycle one. When he gets home, Mel is in tears over the American flag, which got snared in her sewing machine and now looks like a mess. He comforts her and doesn't have it in him to tell her about the police. Before bed, he looks at their bank account and finds he is short unless he uses their savings account. It continues on until he falls in the elevator and somehow the conflict is resolved...Mel meets the police and they realize she is harmless. Or she sells the fixed American flag and that covers it. Something that follows from details in the middle, anyway. Point is, it needed a conflict so it could grow a middle.

Which means next week will be about conflict.

Other things I learned or was reminded of:

Have fun writing the middle. If it isn't fun for you, it won't entertain the reader.

The things that go wrong must be things out of the hero's control. Let them try intelligently and well. It should work if nothing unexpected occurs. Of course, make the unexpected occur.

Death Rattle Writers Festival and the State of Writing

The Death Rattle Writers Festival, based in Nampa, ID, was this weekend. I asked my husband to go to the short story event with me, and he said a writers festival sounds like it's a bunch of people sitting around, reading to each other.

Well, he's right. The event looked like this.

There were other events we didn't go to, though. The festival had a premier screening of the film "Smoke," with one of its creators there to talk about it, and there was also Art of Verse, a hip-hop artist, I believe, who draws inspiration from spoken word poetry. They had a poetry lecture and reading, a flash fiction event and a dramatic reading session of one-act plays, as well as other events.

The main thing I pulled from the short story reading (please note that I wasn't there for all of it) was a reminder of how contemporary literary (not genre) writers seem to strive for a jaded tone.

Remember Mary Robison? She's got the tone down pat.

I'm at Rhythm & Blues and their parents at an eatery called The Half Moon. Have been for every bit of an itchy hour. We're still expecting Petal. Saunders sits across from me, tearing a crescent roll into many parts. Adam's queasy and may be forced to bolt when they bring the food. He has his eyes squeezed shut, his face wrinkled in a look of rejection. I'm in attendance but feeling as if I were sketched into the scene, and maybe with an old pencil. The parents sit across the table. I haven't looked up at them. Nor will I, unless they call on me.

Do you hear it? Not the story, but the tone.

My husband said the writers sounded monotone. I think that is a good way to put it. The life is faded.

Perhaps it's the current -ism. Romanticism, feminism, Orientalism, jadism. If so, count me out. I want to sound like me when I write, or like my characters (who are all reflections of me to some extent): sassy, smart, silly, sarcastic, blunt, poetic, logical, me. That is the most unique and best voice I will ever find, and that voice will lead me to the best stories.

I did a little research into this to see if anyone else has noticed, and found that they have.

This essay, found on an website associated with the College of DuPage, notes that contemporary writers believe we live in a fallen world with no God to save us (note that this is a generalization). They are looking at the world as being without hope.

Read this one, too. It is longer, FYI, and takes in the entire art scene, not just writing. Some of my favorite bits, the parts that rang true to what I've been noticing, include the idea that contemporary art makes fun of sincerity, its tone is a defense against sounding simple and naive, and it gives a disconnected view of the world.

Thoughts? Had you noticed the trend?

The second essay I linked to said sentimentalism is probably next, with its strong convictions. Not sure if I agree with that or not, I don't know enough, but I would like the next movement to be honest.  Let's paint the world as we truly see it, individually. Honesty and truth are always the characteristics of a masterpiece.

A "Settled" Verdict

No, "Settled" was not accepted by the Death Rattle Writers Festival -- but it's okay. Here is what I heard from them, first via my professional Facebook account and then as sent to my personal email (this is the order I read them in, not the order they were received).

Facebook:

(we really liked your short story by the way, we got booked up and we just had to cut off submissions without exceptions but we would love to do a reading with you or something in the future!)

Email:

Due to the high volume of prose submissions, we are remorseful to inform you that we did not select 'Settled' to be read at this years festival.

That being said we are grateful for the submission, and I thoroughly enjoyed the read. You have a great voice and a strong sense of narrative and we would definitely like to work with you in the future. I hope you won't mind us updating you on future reading opportunities and projects the Death Rattle is working on. Thanks again for your time, and we hope you will still come and enjoy the festival.

So they like it, they are just having issues and handled them unethically. Note to those trying to set a deadline for submissions: If you ask writers for three weeks' patience in reading their story, don't put the deadline two weeks before the event. The math does not add up.

And note for writers: Even though the deadline is Saturday, don't wait until then to send it. Better safe than sorry.

Another note for writers: If you get a rejection note, and you will, know that the more personalized it is, the more they were impressed. In this case, I felt like they truly enjoyed it but didn't have the time for a longer note. Most of the email is a form letter, obviously, and the bit about keeping me updated is just them adding me to their mailing list.

If I had been the one judging my own piece, I wouldn't have been so complimentary. The writing is good, but the story is atrocious.

The anatomy of "Settled":

Character intro
Comedic prose
Character intro
Comedic prose
Story begins
Tension (a single line of it)
Climax
Comedic prose
Resolution
Comedic prose

Pulling out all the jokes, you have this:

Character intro
Character intro
Story begins
Tension
Climax
Resolution

Things that are missing: central conflict, conflict development, tension buildup.

The story arc was not at all decent, basically, and to kick myself in the butt for poor storytelling skills, I will write a few posts covering those three missing elements once I finish talking about how the festival goes (I plan on attending anyway).

Submitted! Death Rattle Writer's Festival

I thought I wasn't going to make my goal of submitting something to the Death Rattle Writer's Festival, but I was wrong! However, I didn't end up sending that story I posted a while back about lungs; instead, I set the following. The first half should be familiar. Crossing my fingers it will be accepted!

Jeff was that guy at the office whose chair had an odd habit of sinking now and then, seemingly at random but somehow always while he was having a conversation with someone. For the first month after he started using that particular chair, he had profusely apologized to whomever he happened to be speaking to at the time of each gravitatious incident. The following month, Jeff had had enough and snooped around the building for a replacement chair. Finding one in a spare conference room filled with marvelous, non-sinking chairs (he tested each), he made the swap and had approximately two days of seated bliss before a conversation was once again intruded upon by his chair sinking toward the ground. It appeared that his chair had been returned to his desk. Jeff spent a couple weeks swapping his chair and having it disgracefully return before he finally gave up. He stopped bothering to apologize when he sank a foot during any sort of parley, and instead would staunchly refuse to readjust the chair until the conversation had reached a clear end. If someone so much as crinkled the corner of their eye at his chair’s antics, Jeff would give them his best So? look.

His wife had suggested he prop the chair up on boxes, or perhaps a short filing cabinet or fridge. Mel always had ill-conceived ideas like that; unfortunately, what he had once considered endearing was by now, after 15 years of marriage, grating on his patience as he found himself telling her to please refrain from spray painting the front door with a skull and crossbones in honor of Halloween, to please put the dead leaves in trash bags instead of lighting them on fire in the middle of their suburban front yard, or even to please refrain from giving cookies to the Girl Scouts every time they knocked on the door, no matter how delicious they were or how fresh from the oven. In the instance particular to his office chair, Jeff explained to Mel, in the kindest way possible, that the chair’s single swivel leg would get in the way of an attempt to wedge a refrigerator down there.

“Can’t you just remove the leg?” she had asked.

“How am I supposed to slide my chair in and out from beneath my desk if it’s on a refrigerator?”

“By attaching wheels to the bottom of the refrigerator. Look, it would save you space—”

“That’s too much work, Mel.”

“Fine, have it your way. Let your chair sink. Heaven only knows what sort of impression that makes on whoever it is you talk to all day,” she said.

“The people I talk to all day already know my chair sinks,” Jeff said, massaging his eyes and the bridge of his nose. He didn’t bother asking what people would think if they came into his small office to find him sitting on a filing cabinet or refrigerator, never mind the fact that the nearest outlet for the refrigerator was across the room—the one near his desk was already taken up with computer plugs and a plug for a machine so foreign to him that he kept it more for the bland mystery of it than for its potential usefulness He would have to rearrange his entire office for that extra two feet-by-two feet space his wife was promising he would gain by the chair-base exchange.

“The people you talk to all day,” Mel was saying, “gave you the chair you have as a joke, a welcome-to-the-office hazing, and you should do them one better by economizing space. Who knows, you could get promoted for your ingenuity.”

Mel had enough ingenuity for the both of them, and that’s why Jeff rarely bothered to think anymore beyond whatever was necessary for his position as an assistant to the county clerk. Which, frankly, wasn’t much.

Jeff had settled into his life, settled for his life, and settled on continuing onward in much the same way, if he could help it. Whatever craving he had for excitement was met on at least a weekly basis by Mel.

On a week when Mel had figured it was a good idea to embroider a detailed, silver map of the United States onto their American flag in preparation for the patriotic summer holidays, Jeff decided to walk to work, promising Mel he would pick up some muffins on his way home. It was a promise he fully intended to keep, for although he was perpetually short on patience with his wife, he did love her and didn’t want her to have to go even one Sunday morning without her customary blueberry muffin with streusel on top.

It was raining that day, but since Jeff had never owned an umbrella, and since he had already decided upon walking, there was little he could do about it. He tossed his neighbor’s newspaper on top of his head to protect his hair from the rain, but then remembered how the ink tended to smear and thought better of it, stopping at the corner of the block to deliver the paper to the small beagle the family who lived there had recently adopted. The pup wagged his tail in overdone gratitude and began tearing the paper to pieces so that it would resemble the one already eroding on the front steps of the house.

There were few people out that morning, and of those who were, only Jeff seemed to not have an umbrella in working condition. He walked beneath every tree he saw in an effort to make up for it, but there simply weren’t enough full trees along the way to protect his now-sopping clothes from the rain. So Jeff was soon forced to give up any effort to avoid the drizzle and instead focused on avoiding the deepest of the puddles. It was hard to tell if his socks were wet because of his shoes or his dripping pant legs.

He opened the door to the county office thinking about how he hadn’t realized it was so far from his home, then crossed the stone floor of the lobby toward the elevators.

His elevator-mate was an aging black fellow wearing a fedora, and he stood beside some luggage and an umbrella. The umbrella, which was lying on top of the man's luggage, was blue and opened slightly to air out.

They exchanged good mornings and stared together at the elevator doors.

And then they fell.

This wasn't the usual slow, stomach-churning sinking into the basement; no, this was something that dropped Jeff to his knees in a puddle on the floor and nearly impaled him with the black man's umbrella, something that made him wonder that his last thoughts on this earth were going to be a four-letter word his mother would throttle him for once he was close enough to the pearly gates for her arms to bridge the distance.

But then, maybe such words are the last thoughts through many people's minds.

It certainly wasn't the last thought through the black man's mind. His thoughts weren't coherent enough to be notable at all without his morning coffee to give them a leg up.

They slammed against the bottom of the elevator shaft, and Jeff was jarred onto his belly in the darkness. Through the pain and dark, his thoughts centered on Mel and what his last words to her would be—something heroic, he hoped, or else something novel. Something that would help her world continue to revolve now that he wouldn’t be in it.

He dragged his hands into his coat pockets, fumbled out a pen and, energy failing, penned her a note on the surface closest to where his hand happened to fall.

He heard the other man move, may God bless his soul and Jeff’s, and then gave up on living.

But perhaps he gave up too soon.

When Jeff woke up, someone was slapping him. Death isn’t in the business of slapping people to make sure they have truly died, he was pretty sure, and so he blinked his way through the pulsing bass in his head and saw the ceiling panel lights of the county office basement.

“Hey buddy. What’d you do, drop one story and figure your number was up?” The slapper gave half a smile of amusement. His eyes looked a little concerned, though, as those darn fingers starting poking everywhere on his body, causing pain to strike up wherever they passed.

“Stop,” he begged. “Pain.”

“Staff of life, sir, staff of life. Hey,” he said, tugging a little on Jeff’s tie and flipping it over. “What’s this?”

Jeff moved his eyes over to look and saw that his pen had failed to give off much ink when he was writing his last words.

All that was written was “chai,” in bad penmanship.

“Shopping list,” he said. He was becoming sensible enough to be embarrassed. “Other guy?”

“Oh, this is his floor. He’s fetching some paperwork or something.”

More embarrassed.

“Yeah, don’t worry about him. He’s been in falling elevators before. Takes them in stride.”

“He what?”

“Doesn’t matter. Can I have permission to use your phone to call someone to come get you?”

“Yeah.”

“This your wife?” The slapper flashed him a picture of Mel.

Jeff tried to nod, but it didn’t really work, and he just blinked instead. Then he fell asleep.

He woke up again in the car, his face smashed up against the passenger side window and the seat belt halfway up his stomach from his slouched position. He groaned.

Mel was the one driving. “I asked for muffins, not chai tea, Jeff,” she said, her words clipped and tart. “Blueberry muffins.”

Then she glanced over at him and sighed, handing him his tie. “But here, I finished up the list for you.”

The back of his tie now read "chai, blueberry muffins, OJ, baklava, Cheerios."

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...John J. O'Hagan

Let me be clear about something: No one at my work asked me to review books. I do it because I love to read and any excuse to spend time reading while at work is a good one. My only criteria for which books I read is it must have a local author.

That said, I wasn't super excited about reading John O'Hagan's When the Basques Ruled California. It's a history book, and as much as I have always wanted to enjoy history, I have never really been able to get into it. I wanted teachers to share stories, but they always shared events connected with names, places, and dates. I wanted to learn about past cultures, but they always shared technological advances and cultural shifts. I wanted the details, they gave the big picture.

But O'Hagan gave me what I always wanted from a history book. I got to learn about the woman who stormed out of mass because she was the object lesson of the day, and really her husband had cheated on her and none of it was her fault. I got to learn about the Franciscan priest who just wanted to be transferred away from the frontier but dutifully followed orders anyway. I got to read about the native who killed his wife so he could have relations with another woman without getting in trouble for adultery. I even read about that man's judicial proceedings, but not in so much depth as to be boring.

I actually wondered whether O'Hagan was being ethical; was he making personalities up? Was he taking artistic license to fill in the blanks? When I asked him about it during our interview for the paper, he told me he was able to go into that much detail because the Spanish and Basques of the time were obsessed with record keeping. He had all the info and wasn't making anything up.

The other reason for all the detail, though, is O'Hagan thinks history is about people, not events, dates, or places. Basically, he is the teacher I wish I had had. The book was easy to understand, interesting to read (especially if you already cared about the topic), and detailed enough to help you form a full picture of what was going on - both the big picture and the small one.

You can read my Idaho Press-Tribune review here. I came at it from an angle of describing the process that goes into writing and publishing a history book, just for interest's sake. For those curious about that process, or the publishing process in general, I recommend giving it a read.

Analysis of Reading Author Experiment

Charles Dickens

Douglas Adams

I let you down by not analyzing my author experiment last week. I forgot and wanted to talk about the picture book. I will analyze now instead.

First. Who knew Douglas Adams and Charles Dickens were such similar writers?! I picked those two because I figured they were so different from each other the difference in my writing would be stark. While it modernized itself a bit, I couldn't help but notice the similar sense of humor while doing the two different readings. Dickens loves to be literal and honest, to point out the silliness inherent in humans, and to present jokes with a straight face. Adams is blunt, uses silliness to great effect, and acts as if his constant joking were totally serious. The only real differences are genre and time period. I swear these two would have been friends.

Mary Robison

What it means is from what I can tell, my writing modernized between the first and second segments, but the sense of humor - they had reminded me how funny silliness with a straight face can be - remained largely the same.

Things changed more when I added Mary Robison. The book of hers I was reading from, One D.O.A. One on the Way, is minimalist to an extreme. That was reflected in my shorter sentences. Also courtesy of Robison was my turn from being silly to being cynical.

Was this on purpose? I honestly am not sure. Human error is a large factor in this experiment that could only be done away with if I hadn't known my hypothesis and purpose. Basically, if I had done this on accident or asked an unknowing person to act as test subject, it would have worked better.

Harper Lee

I do not think it was completely on purpose, though I was definitely aware it was happening. I think what happens, subconsciously, is that when reading a talented author's work, I admire it and notice the aspects I particularly enjoy. I remember how fun the silliness is, how gritty and true minimalism can sound, and I want to bring it into my writing. It also puts me into a mood that fits that author's tone.

This experiment was tiring. Writing can be tiring when it isn't flowing right (power through anyway!), but this was draining in its own right. I was getting breaks, so the writing shouldn't have gotten me down, but the constant switching from style to style wore me out. That is why the Juliet Marillier section is so short. My story wasn't pushing itself forward and I was continually disorienting myself.

Juliet Marillier

I read it to my husband, and he said it didn't sound like me. It was terse and flippant, were his exact words, which is something I am going to blame on Mary Robison. It took a while to get her tone out of my system, and by the end, it still wasn't quite gone. I think it is because her style is so domineering, whereas the styles of Harper Lee and Juliet Marillier are softer, more mellow. Maybe I needed more time reading from them to soak up their respective tones and phraseology, whereas Mary Robison's prose comes in swinging.

I had never thought about people's writing styles being strong like a personality can be strong, but I suppose it is true. There's a lesson I wasn't looking for.

Have any added observations? Let me know. I'm interested.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Mercy McCulloch Hasselblad

I originally wrote this review for the Idaho Press-Tribune, but who am I kidding? I knew I'd be putting it here, too.

I think this is the first time I have reviewed a children's picture book. To me, the writing in those books does not matter much beyond its clarity and brevity. A lot needs to be said with as little as possible. I have not read the book to a child yet, but I think it would fit the bill for a 5- to 6-year-old. Too much text for younger. As for the pictures, which are arguably more important than the text, hers were a bit dark but are probably fine. Again, I need to read it to a child to be sure.

Here's what was printed in the paper, with a couple words added here and there.

A beloved analogy in the Bible is found in Isaiah 64: “Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.”

When I think of this analogy, I think about how stressed out I can get sometimes and how those hard times have helped sculpt me into the person I am today.

Mercy McCulloch Hasselblad, of Nampa, looks at it a bit differently. For her, it wasn’t about the pain, but about the confusion.

“Everybody always said I should be a nurse because I can handle blood and guts and everything and I patch people up,” she told me when I paid her a visit. “But I wasn’t sure, because I really like doing art and writing, and I wasn’t sure what I should do. And I was praying a lot and just trying to figure it out (during college). … If God made me adept at certain things, should I do those, or should I do other things?”

The conundrum: Mercy wanted to serve God. By being a nurse, she could do mission work; by becoming an artist, what could she do that would mean as much?

Mercy, I’d like to suggest that you have served God admirably with your book “The Artist and the Clay.” There is more than one way to serve, and you have found one that suits you well.

This children’s book was printed in India while Mercy and her husband were there doing work with their charity, Covenant Media.

The book tells the story of a clay figurine who wants to be beautiful like the stained glass window in the Artist’s house. The Artist has other plans, though, and by the end, the clay figurine is something special, indeed.

The text is simple and carries a memorable lesson: You are made the way you are for a purpose. It’s a message our world could hear a little more often, in my opinion. Think of how many more people would reach their potential if only they thought it was a possibility and of worth.

I haven’t taken an art class since the sixth grade, but Mercy took me on as a student during our interview so she could show me the program she uses for her art, Adobe Illustrator. We made an evergreen tree … that looked a whole lot better after she worked her magic on it. Wish I had the tree to show you, but I don't. Sorry.

Mercy has been working with the program since she was 15 years old (so of course her trees look better than mine, but who’s justifying themselves?). Familiarity didn’t necessarily speed up the process much, though; she told me one scene took her 10 hours to make. Thankfully, with the computer program, she can re-use images. Repeated images in the book include ivy leaves, books and wood patterns, among other images. See if you can scout them out when you get a copy.

Mercy said all these illustrations started as scribbles of kindergarten caliber. That gives her a basic image to work off of, and she improves it from there. Luckily, she can try and try again on the same picture without running into physical problems like a stray pen marking.

If you want to get your hands on a copy of the book, she’s selling it on Amazon.com.

I just realized she never signed my copy. Dang it.

Reading Author Experiment

Experiment: Read an author for 15 minutes, then write for a few minutes. Repeat process with five different authors. Purpose: To illustrate how one's reading affects one's own writing style.

Charles Dickens

The hole in the ground was rather square. This would have been normal had a tractor or a gravedigger had digged it, but that couldn’t have been the case because it was wallowing in the middle of the interstate, and no respectful gravedigger ever digs there and no tractor would have braved the traffic, much less if there were no cones or other construction equipment to bolster it up.

Granted, it was a small hole, replacing, in effect, one of the white dashes that divided the lanes. I had been sent to investigate by the police, and so had set up my own road cones and sat down to get a look at it. By the tape measure, it was fifteen feet deep, and a flashlight showed its sides to be straight, as well as I could see as I peered in. And, of course, the first few inches were pavement and the rest dirt. Or rocks, but had someone sawed through rocks to do it?

Some might have suspected alien activity, but unless aliens were setting up a giant tripod, and we found similar holes elsewhere, I wouldn’t put any stock in it.

I have always been of the mind that if aliens were to come to Earth, the first thing they would do would be to take photographs. I’m sure it’s what Lewis and Clark would have done, had they been able.

The next thing to do was to take a sampling of the sides, see if whatever had dug or punched the hole had left behind any evidence of its makeup. Eggs made in a cast-iron pan will have small slivers of the iron scraped up into them; the same concept generally applies in situations like these. I think.

I’ve never really been sure, actually, but they pay me to pretend I am and so I do and no one is the wiser for it. After all, there’s no one who can truly be a professional in matters of holes.

Douglas Adams

The main thing you have to know about holes is they are relative. They are really just depressions, of the extremely vertical sort, in a level surface. If looked at from above with very good eyes, they wouldn’t seem to be there at all, so really, holes are of no consequence.

I don’t make it a habit of telling my customers that, because if they realized that holes are really just a psychological problem, I’d be out of a job. And then I wouldn’t be able to make rent or go out dancing at the Eagles lodge or anything good like that. I’d have to go make a hole in a mountainside so I could live in it, and that sounds like a sure way to insanity.

The trick is to get the bottom of the hole to be flush with the surrounding ground again—the bigger hole, if you will. Most level grounds, exempting plateaus and their ilk, are really just holes, if we consider that the highest ground is where “level” is and everything ought to be equal in height. But then, maybe the holes are correct and the bottom is where it all should be and holes are setting the world back to rights?

Every job has existential questions. An actor might think about whether a character is truly alive in another plane of existence, a philosopher might wonder whether God is really so smart as He says He is (we are taking it solely on His authority, after all), a child care worker might consider where a child has got off to this time. I simply ask about whether holes are the correct way of life and I am destroying the world around me by consistently plugging them up.

I plugged this one up with cow manure, mainly because it was the closest thing at hand and because it would fill the space better than grass clippings from the patch of ground that runs between the two directions of freeway.

The last bit, of course, was covered with tar, and just like that I apologized to the Earth for destroying its attempts at correctness by feeding it fertilizer.

Mary Robison

I have filled holes with all sorts of things. Bubble wrap, water from a fire hydrant (firefighters forgive me), cardboard, whatever is handy at the time. So long as the top couple inches is the same material as the stuff around it, and I didn’t make a second hole plugging the first, I’m home free.

Home is on 22nd Street, near the Sunrise Inn. Means I have a steady flow of neighbors. Nice, sometimes. Other times, I wonder if any of them is going to break into my house and steal something from me. I don’t know what, I’ve only got an outdated television and an impressive VHS collection that’s pretty much useless now that the player has worn itself out. Unlike a DVD, you can hand-rewind a VHS. Also unlike a DVD, you can’t play it forward by hand.

I keep the collection just in case. Maybe it will be my retirement fund until I fill the last hole with my dead body and they say I lived like I died and whatever else people say about people at funerals.

I stepped through my front door and prop my umbrella up on the doorframe, leaving it open a bit so it can dry out. No one wants to open up a moldy umbrella. Mildewy? Whatever.

Dinner is Pasta-Roni with meat sauce, except the meat isn’t there because I’m vegan and besides that, who would want to eat meat from inside a container? Back when I ate a steak a day, I bought it from a butcher nearby. That was before the doctor said I had to be vegan for my health.

Yes, I live alone. It means I don’t have to share a bathroom.

Harper Lee

The house once belonged to my grandmother. I moved in to live with her and when she passed on, I stayed put. By then I was building up a respectable reputation as a holer, and I knew if I moved somewhere else, I would have to start all over again. People take your business seriously when they respect you and you’ve saved their cattle from enough broken legs.

Being a holer is about more than filling a hole; it’s about figuring out what made it in the first place and making it so the hole won’t reappear (setting aside the wishes of Mother Earth, who I could almost call my business partner). Accordingly, I pulled out the Ziploc bag of soil I had pulled from the side of the hole in various spots and dumped it out on the table that once was a dining room table but now serves as my lab. The microscope is set into the table so I can slide the sediment across the table under it for viewing and then out again without bothering to lift it onto a platform like with a normal microscope.

I focused the lens so I could view the dirt and spent a good amount of time staring and sifting and staring. I knew well what it was—copper—but that didn’t give me much of an answer and so I continued staring in hopes that I could figure it out. Was a pipe shoved in and removed? That seemed the likely explanation, from the hole’s perspective, but from a road perspective, no one had seen a giant copper tube sticking straight up out of the interstate. I am sure it would have made the news and I wouldn’t have been asked to do the job.

I’d have to go look at that hole tomorrow for more clues. All I had so far was copper, and that’s too common to be of much use.

Juliet Marillier

The biggest hole I was ever challenged with was a mile long and two feet wide. It was as if the ground had developed a tear, and the tear was dangerously close to the perimeter of a hospital. This hole was not bizarre in any particular way, though, as there had been an earthquake the week before and the ground everywhere had given way to small chasms. I didn’t say it was the most impressive, but it was the biggest.

As for the most impressive: There was a hole in a nearby beach. Let me tell you, that was a conundrum. How to fill a hole that was softened by the water around it, which constantly fought to widen the hole? I had to wait for low tide to get to it, then work fast in dim conditions to plug it – with seaweed.

Next week, I will analyze the results.

Annotations

One of the best things to happen to me in high school was the English assignment to annotate the books we read. Annotate, as in take notes about the book in the book. At first, my notes weren't super intelligent. No, they were not stupid, they just weren't particularly insightful.

Example, from the first chapter of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451: "Later, going to sleep, he would feel the fiery smile still gripped by his face muscles, in the dark. It never went away, that smile, it never ever went away, as long as he remembered." Next to this, I wrote "forced to be happy? Loving life a ton?" in the margin. Fairly obvious observation and question, younger Elizabeth. Not helpful for much of anything.

Current me thought about the word "ever," and how juvenile it sounds, by the way. Giving the author the benefit of purpose, we see he wants us to see the narrator as young and naive.

But even though they were obvious, those early annotations were helpful -- they were practice. They taught me how to read. And that taught me how to write.

Most of the insights you read on this blog are courtesy of that skill. I began with simple annotations like the one above, marking questions, things I liked, insights into symbols and imagery, and progressed to over-annotating. That wasn't strictly useful except as practice, either.

Do me a favor and rewind memory lane to this post. Look at the pictures I posted; that is what I mean by over-annotating. While this was for a college course, it was a skill I learned toward the end of high school. It is less useful, academically, than it may look, because it is hard to find much of anything. Close reading, interpreting a passage, doing a character analysis, sure. But doing a whole book like this (I didn't go that far, thankfully) would make you lose everything. Plus, when you go back to reread, you won't want to read all those notes, too.

Over-annotating taught me to edit. My husband once looked at a query letter I was editing for someone and was amazed at how much I had written in comments. It may have been longer than the letter itself -- and all I did was annotate. Over-annotating taught me to look at individual words and phrases. It focused on the language itself, while my early attempts focused on story and character.

My current style of annotating incorporates both. I take notes on the side for the general things and write in the book itself for the specifics. I am more interested in how things work than on character or plot analysis -- notice I looked at why Bradbury used "ever" instead of commenting on the subject of the sentence, the smile. I also noticed that the muscles were gripping it -- concrete words with a connotation of force, perhaps even fear. But one value of the first style of annotations is it captures the impressions of a first read. Writers need that info from editors.

If you want to be an editor, learn to annotate. Buy books and read them with pen in hand. Or skip books -- read magazines, newspaper articles, blog posts, speeches, anything you can get your hands on, and annotate it. How could it possibly be improved? Read and reread the same stuff over and over until you have an idea. Then get your hands on more stuff to read and annotate.

The same thing goes for writers. If you want to write, learn to annotate. Buy books (or anything with words) and read them with a pen in hand. It doesn't matter if you read the notes later -- it is about the process of actively thinking about what you read, of learning how to write from an author while they write.

This is note-taking for the sake of note-taking. Think you can handle that? I promise practice will beget mad skills.

KC

I am working on a new short story I hope to submit to the Death Rattle Writers Festival, held annually where I live. The word limit is 5,000, I believe, so I decided to split my story into five sections, each with about 1,000 words.

First section: Introduction to concept and conflict, main characters

Second section: Introduce supporting character, add background and depth to conflict

Third section: Escalation of concept and conflict

Fourth section: Climax

Fifth section: Denouement (like a conclusion, but stories don't really "conclude." It's the closure scene)

Hopefully it works out! For now, here's what I have so far (Don't worry, I'll have people edit it for me):

Had Geoff slammed through the front door five seconds earlier, he would have seen KC, photograph-still, straddling the doorway between kitchen and living room and holding her lungs, half-inflated, just in front of her sternum.

But he didn’t. And when she heard the secondhand Subaru park in the carport, the sound jumpstarted KC into a panic. She ran into the kitchen, skidding around for a hiding place, somewhere to stash her lungs; and without much time to spare, she flung open a cupboard, pulled out the jars of flour and sugar and oats and rice and stuffed her lungs into the almost-too-small space, shutting the cupboard door just as her husband slammed into the entryway.

She pushed the jars against the wall and kept her back to the doorway so the pieces of her body that connected self to lungs didn’t show. At least the veins and arteries weren’t dripping.

“KC?”

“Kitchen!”

Perhaps she should look busy. She started washing her hands.

It was hard to breathe, and her breaths were longer without being deeper, the distance from lung to body resulting in a feeling of lightheadedness. She would have sat down if only she could move without Geoff noticing. Best to reveal one tragedy at a time.

The silver lining: Being attached to the cupboards made the less irregular of the two seem far less dire.

He was in the kitchen now, too, and gave her a thoughtless kiss before turning to grab a soda from the fridge.

“Geoff?”

“Yeah?”

“I got fired today.”

The oven timer beeped, shrill tones replacing the sound of her own heartbeat in her ears, though she could see her veins pulsing on the countertop. Forcing herself, KC turned her head to look back at her husband.

He was staring at the refrigerator door, the muscles in his jaw working and his grip on the soda can tight.

KC turned away again, focusing instead on her attempts to breathe, hands flat on the counter to keep them from trembling.

“Great.”

The timer beeped again, and Geoff shoved the soda into her hands and jerked the oven door open, tearing the towel off the bar on the door to protect his hands as he pulled out the tuna casserole. The entire range shook when he put the 9x13 down on it, and it shook even more when he threw the door closed and jabbed the timer button off.

Heroes: Taking It to a Personal Level

I was doing my hair sometime this week, listening to music, when I had a small epiphany. Small because I've halfway had it before, I just hadn't thought it through.

The song I was listening to was "Do You Want to Build a Snowman" from Frozen (Disney songs were the order of the day). That song is my favorite from the film, and I remembered while listening to it how Anna was best friends with her older sister, but then her older sister as good as abandoned her, avoiding her for years.

She could have taken that as betrayal. She could have become mean and self-centered, but instead she continued to reach out to her sister. Anna even went so far as to give her life for this sister, someone who many people would have advised she give up on.

Listening to the song made me realize Anna is a hero of mine. I admire how she loves despite how hurt she feels.

I asked my husband who his fictional hero is, and he said it was probably William Thatcher from A Knight's Tale. The reason: Even though life has been unfair to him, he didn't give up his dreams and did everything in his power to achieve them.

By then I had a theory, which I'll tell you about in a minute. Here are three other heroes, from my brother and two friends of mine, respectfully:

~ Cimorene from Dealing With Dragons, because "she doesn't care about following the norms and does what she wants. She's able to defeat the wizards and live with dragons and avoid unwanted princes. She's just really independent and a problem solver."

~ Eowyn from Lord of the Rings and Ellie Sattler from Jurassic Park. "Why is because they are feminist bad a**es."

~ Po from Kung Fu Panda, because even though he feels awkward and unable, he dreams big, stays optimistic as best he can and fights to believe in himself.

Notice any trends? Here is one I see.

As everyone knows, we root for the underdog. I think we cheer even louder, though, if it isn't just any underdog and we can relate. Let's go backward with this:

~ The friend of mine who said Po struggles with bipolar disorder and an addiction to pain medication, courtesy of years spent playing sports. She has worked hard to overcome that addiction and the deep depression she falls into sometimes, and she continues to fight and stay positive.

~ The friend who loves the feminist characters is, obviously, a feminist. She will fight for what she believes in, no matter what, and has had to fight her share of battles to protect those she loves and those she thinks need more respect.

~ My brother is quiet around our family, though not so much around his friends, from what I've gathered. He's a teenager, so you can guess that while our parents are trying to push him a bit, he's also pushing back. Perhaps it is most telling to say that this brother loves Frozen and the Let It Go song.

~ My husband has great dreams of earning a Ph.D. in physics, but he always feels like the world is against him. Lack of money, dyslexia and a few other things land him squarely in the "I need to change my stars" camp.

~ As for me, I had a bit of an abusive relationship with my sister while we were growing up. We still argue if we spend too much time together, but I have put a lot of conscious effort into loving her. She could see it from the other perspective, too; there were a number of times growing up when I would play in our closet and not let her in.

My theory is that our heroes are our heroes because we so closely identify with them. We see their struggles as a form of the struggles we are going or have gone through.

How to apply that to writing? When you are constructing your heroes, give them human struggles. They aren't just fighting a dragon; they are fighting a dragon and trying to overcome personal trials, as well. There should always be a fight below the surface as well as one above.

Ask around your friends and family for their heroes and let me know if I'm right. Then figure out who your heroes are and, if you want a splash of authenticity in your writing, place your own struggles and those of people you love inside of it. Feed your muse your doubts, fears, trials, and other meat from the dragons you have had to fight. Your story will be alive because of it.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Paul Raymond

One of the joys of my job is I get paid to read and do what I've been doing on this blog all along--review. As I said earlier, though, I get put in a tough situation when the book is not one I would normally recommend. No one would be happy with me if I lambasted a local writer's work, especially since I'm not a well-known and respected reviewer (yet). So I have to get creative.

How to put a positive spin on things without being dishonest? The last time I was faced with this issue, I ended up writing an article about what went into the book, neglecting to review the content at all. This time, I decided to do a Q&A, since the book, Paul Raymond's The Other Side: Finding the Greener Grass, was essentially a memoir with a fictional spin. The author is the main character, and the realizations he has are real, but the events are contrived to make his point blatant (I don't think that worked out well for him, but oh well, I wasn't his editor).

I thought a Q&A would go well, but then I discovered the author is a politician. I knew that before, of course, since he's on the city council, but I hadn't figured on having to machete my way through non-answers in an effort to get him to answer the question I'd asked. He kept wanting to reiterate the same points: This book is fiction, and don't judge people. That was it. I was looking for something more philosophical, since it was a reflection of sorts on his life and on judgment/stereotypes/assumptions. In essence, he wanted to talk about the book and I wanted to talk about the ideas in the book. It reminded me of an episode in Psych, where someone tells Shawn Spencer to give the answer to the question he wished people had asked instead of the one they actually posed. Annoying. It made me feel sorry for our legislative reporter. Thankfully, when I gave him a chance to look over his answers, he did a bit of good machete-work himself.

Before I let you read the Q&A, I'll say that no, I don't necessarily recommend this book unless you want to the message "Don't judge based on stereotypes" bashed into your head over and over. It is written clearly, though without much style, and will get that memo across well.

And now for portions of the Q&A, beginning with part of the introduction I gave it in the article, which can be found in full here:

The protagonist and narrator of Paul Raymond’s “The Other Side: Finding the Greener Grass,” published this summer by Nampa-based Point Rider Publishing, has an unflattering view of farmers and others he sees as not being “professional.” But when he gets laid off and takes a U-Haul truck on the road to a new town and a new start, he meets people along the way who change his attitude.

Editor’s note: The questions and answers below have been edited for clarity and brevity.

Q: Why didn’t you write “The Other Side” as a memoir?

A: When I started writing, my emotions came out. It was kind of caustic initially. I had to go back and ramp it back so I could let somebody read it. It was therapeutic for me. After that, I sat on it for years and never did do anything with it until a publisher contacted me and made me think, “Well, maybe I should do something with it.” I thought it was just personal for me, even though, as I said, most of it is fiction. Like Hank, at the store — the store was real and farmers came to the store, but that whole conversation, all that was fiction. I utilized fiction to better express my point.

Q: Why did you choose to use yourself as the main character?

A: Well, I didn’t necessarily mean for me to be the main character, but that’s the only way I could express it. I have not written a book before, so this is new and it came over a long process. It went from venting to becoming a book.

Q: What went into the decision to make it a road trip story?

A: I literally moved from one town to another, and I did get laid o•. Many of my thoughts (reminiscing) along the way are real, but most of the experiences on the journey were not. My thoughts are there, my feelings are there, but it was largely ÿction. I just used that trip as kind of a base line.

Q: Has anyone subject to stereotype in this book read it?

A: Yes, Dan, in the last chapter. I have just met him within the last 10 years, and I let him read it. He’s since passed away. But I wasn’t done with it at the time. I hadn’t added that chapter he was involved with. He thought it was really good. I have at least one farmer who is going to read it, but I haven’t had anybody — well, no, that’s not true. When I first wrote it I gave it to some people. It was offensive to them because I was so caustic. I was just letting loose.

Q: I hope you haven’t lost any friends over it?

A: Not that I know of.

Q: Were your parents any different from the other farmers you grew up around?

A: Well, I perceived my dad to be pretty sharp. A lot of people came to have him help with things. My mom and dad were both educated. I didn’t ever put them in that stereotyped position. I kind of separated them out somehow.

Q: In your opinion, what is the connection between self-confidence and a judgmental attitude?

A: I’m in my late 20s on that trip, and I kind of put myself back in that time. I was more realistically self-conscious than I am now. My self-confidence wasn’t quite as strong, and I think living on a farm kind of added to that. I pictured the people in the city to be really sophisticated, more affluent, and, comparatively, farmers didn’t seem to know what was going on. I didn’t want to be branded with them, but I was.

Q: Do you think you carried that “branding” with you through your life?

A: Absolutely. But I eventually got over it and realized that I was OK and they were OK. I kind of lived that book and wrote it; it’s actually kind of the process I went through in real life. Only, most of those events didn’t occur. It took a long time. I think those feelings about farmers and others went away when I got done writing the first hundred pages or so. I didn’t have the intensity that I started writing with because I was relaxed. I was able to talk to and associate with anybody, any culture; I haven’t had a problem with it since. It was a life-changing experience.

“The Other Side” is available online.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Randy King

This week, I reviewed a cookbook. Yeah, it was a first.

Randy King lives in my area, and he put together a cookbook called "Chef in the Wild." I already wrote a review for the Idaho Press-Tribune, which you can find here, so I'm not going to re-review it. Suffice it to say he goes through how to hunt, butcher, and cook a variety of animals.

Now for a couple thoughts.

First off: I don't think the quality of writing in a cookbook matters. I mean, the point is not to create great prose, to engage both your intellect and your imagination. The point is to tell you how to cook something. The end. Does this book do that well? I'd say it does, though I haven't cooked anything from it. I don't have wild meat on hand.

But I was never confused, and hunting tips and butchering instructions were given in prose format, before the recipe. There are pictures throughout the book, not for instructional purposes so much as to break up the mass of words. Perhaps they could have included pictures meant to illustrate butchering instructions. That would be my only request to better this book.

My other thought is that food blogging may have changed the format of a cookbook. In older cookbooks, you have the recipes and that is it. But if you go online, recipes are usually introduced with a personal anecdote and/or a walk-through of the recipe, giving detailed instructions and tips for how to do what the recipe requires.

The comments section below allows other cooks to weigh in on the recipe, giving alternative instructions to improve it, so the recipe-searcher can look through those and the original recipe to decide how to make the dish best. It has given light to the subjectivity of cooking. I once saw someone who said a brownie recipe was terrible because it was too soft and cake-like. They wanted brownies that were hard and chewy. I happen to think this person's mother didn't know how to make good brownies, but hey, it told me something valuable about the recipe: It made soft brownies.

While I have yet to see a published cookbook with a comments section, where other chefs weigh in on the recipe, "Chef in the Wild" did imitate a food blog in the story-before-recipe way. It wasn't just recipe after recipe. I consider this an improvement; I do so much better, personally, with recipes that have additional instructions in prose. They are the next-best thing to having the cook in the kitchen with me.

Basically, I highly approve of this evolution in cookbook-dom. I also highly recommend this cookbook to any hunters out there.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Bea Dubois

I was put in a tough position this week. A woman who lives in my area had written and published a book, Briarwood Cottage, and she wanted me to read and write about it in the paper. I cheerily said to send it on over.

The problem: The book isn't any good. The story is mildly interesting but has no arc, climax, or progression, and there are passages of lecture - straight lecture from teachers in the book - that does nothing for the plot or story at all. She must have done the research and wanted to use it somehow.

The characters did not make up for the deplorable story. As I said, they did not progress, and while she gave them small conflicts, each was easily resolved or forgotten. They were likeable enough, but incomplete. They weren't annoyingly 2D, if that's anything. Not deep, but there was some roundness.

As for the writing, not good. I mean, the message got across, but I got no pleasure from reading it. Simple, like if a high schooler had written the story. And this woman is no high schooler. She was writing it as a mother with young kids.

This, people, is what happens if you write a story without learning how. Not everyone can write a good story; it takes conscientious reading and writing. Please work hard so you can write something you can be proud of.

The tough position came when I needed to write something for the paper. I couldn't recommend the book. So I called the author to see if I could possibly recommend it for its one redeeming factor: It sparked intellectual interest in the Church of the Nazarene. The characters were part of that church and since one is a revival preacher, it factored in greatly. While reading, I was surprised by what these people believe and I wanted to know more. Why believe those things? How much of this was accurate, or was I misunderstanding? So I found myself doing light research into the church.

I had pinpointed the one redeeming aspect to be that it could bring interest to the church, assuming that was the author's ultimate goal.

It wasn't.

Turns out she doesn't even belong to that church, though she is Christian. Her real goal, to write a story of God helping people recover, was hinted at in the story but did not go anywhere. It was more about the characters than God.

Fail. I can't possibly recommend this book. What to write?

I ended up writing this, which was about the writing of the book and about the book, not at all a review. Safe ground. I didn't want to insult her in the newspaper - I am trying to make people want to talk to me, not push them away by being mean. The article ran in our A&E (Arts and Entertainment) section. And then I moved on to reading a cookbook someone in my area wrote. More on the cookbook later! Never reviewed one of those, have I?

Stolen first line: Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer"

Tom--

Well, he never gets it. When I asked if he wanted to play catch last week, he thought we were going to throw a rock around instead of a baseball. I asked him once to fill up my water bottle, and he filled it, sure, but with anything he found interesting and it took forever long, then I had to dump out all the dirt and rocks and thorns and I had dirty water for the rest of the day. For a while, I thought it was because of he can't talk right, but then Gretel told me he can hear fine. Just can't talk right. Sheesh.

He's the reason for all this trouble, is what I'm trying to get at, sir. I had nothing to do with it, 'cept for  it was me who broke the window.

Oh. The window by the back porch, sir. Not the front door, no way, that was all Tom.

See, he thought it'd be a laugh to, I don't know, to, ummm, to hide all your shoes around the house, sir.

Yes, sir.

I already said I don't know why! Ask him, not me!

Er, heh, that was me too, sir. See, I'd dropped my daddy's ring, his class ring, his class of 1915 class ring, sir, the one with the ruby in it to match the school's colors, sir. The other color was purple, he told me, but only sissy men--

No, sir. I think I dropped it down the heating vent or something when we were looking for places to hide your shoes. Have you seen it? Did it fly out at your face and that's why ... never mind. If you see it, you should tell me right away because my daddy said I could have it for the week as long as I didn't lend it to Tom so I've got until then to find it but you won't let me look for it in your house, which is where it is, so that means you've got to look for me or else daddy won't let me outside ever again.

Please, sir? I can't fix your window and your heater and your doorknob and all the other stuff if I am grounded, and Tom can't do anything right because he can't talk right so his parents never taught him nothin'.

No, he goes to school, sir. We sit next to each other.

Okay, sir, but you don't know what you're gettin' yourself into by asking us to work together to fix everything. Tom hasn't ever fixed a thing except a sandwich. He'll probably bring peanut butter and bread or else his lucky butter knife, which he has because his daddy won't let him have a real knife, instead of bringing a hammer or nails or a screwdriver or something.

Could you maybe look for the ring while I am gone, sir? I have to go find Tom. He could be clear to the Denny's by now.

Thank you, sir. You're a great neighbor, sir.

No, I don't know where your slippers ended up. Maybe check the bathtub.