THIS BLOG HAS MOVED

Check me out over at my NEW website: AprilLineWriting.com

You can register for creative writing workshops, read all the old blogs that are here, new blogs that are more interesting and better written and less self conscious.

I'm still building the site, and I might give it a facelift in the not too distant future, but it's pretty good so far.

On Truth and Creative Nonfiction

I went to Pitt, allegedly the birthplace of creative nonfiction, for a semester for graduate school. Something that got paid a lot of lip-service was the role of truth in Creative Nonfiction. Here's where I've landed on the matter. Just today actually. First some back story:

I want to write a novel about my grandma. Baptized Florence, but Flossie, Flo, Sarge, or any other of a slew of nicknames to her friends and family. Florence Ella Leib died long about 2005, when my baby was just a wee baby. She was an ahead-of-her-time feminist pragmatist. At least that's the truth that matters to me.

Here are the other truths that matter to me: She served in WWII. She had a baby at age 17 to a guy who didn't marry her. She had 4 more babies with another guy who also didn't marry her, but who at least lived with her and pretended until he became a PTSD drunk and she worked 3 jobs to support her 4 kids, one of whom was my dad.

Recently, I was at some family thing--right, it was a family reunion with about 6 of the not-dead people from my grandma's generation, most of whom are now dying off. It was the other side of the family, but one of Flossie's cousins or something married one of my mom's mom's brothers or something. In any case, the two sides of my family are connected somehow via marriage (but not via blood thank the lucky constellations). Anyhow, all the folks in my mom's generation, who've started losing parents now, were all ruminating over how it's important to ask these questions we have about our parents' parents. Because before we know it, they'll be gone and there won't be any more asking.

Since then, I've been in minor panic mode trying to figure out how to get one-on-one with a couple of Flossie's living siblings who're cogent enough to converse. And it occurred to me today, as I read this disaster of a short story I wrote, that the important truth in fiction is the emotional truth. Whatever my grandma's youth was like, what I make up will be at least as cool and, as far as anybody who's alive can remember, as accurate!

Boy-oh was that a liberating epiphany. The stuff I know is enough. And unless there's some political or social or moral reason for the whole journalistic integrity thing, creative nonfiction can be fiction as far as I'm concerned. Arguably, all realist fiction is creative nonfiction. The only stuff that's really fiction would be dystopian sci fi and those sorts of things. But to a schizophrenic, even those things could seem real.

The notion that perception is reality has been hitting my home base pretty hard of late.

Book Group: Read the Free Short Story, "Cliff Hanging" first, okay?

So like if we were really a book group, there are spoilers in here, so if you didn't note the title of this here blog post, go read the story first, m'kay? It lives Here.

I put this in a separate post because I didn't want those of you, friends of mine, who will read this story just because I wrote it, to bring my neuroses to the story. Of course, I want you to all wildly disagree with me, but I don't think you will.

Here's how I see "Cliff Hanging": It is a massive pile of bullocks. Not, of course, because it is poorly written. No, I'd say the writing is just about all it has going for it--except for some weirdness because I decided to go against my gut and not have 3 tense changes in the story, so the opening few paragraphs, which used to be past tense, are now present. Also, it's heavy-handed when in scene, and uninteresting when not.

I told myself I could do tense changes now because I'm not a student of fiction writing. I am now an expert, and I know what I am doing. You all know what a pile of BS that is, because we get almost all of the cool stuff we get by accident. But after the story was finished, I thought to leave the three tense sections as kind of a verse, chorus, refrain structure. Like it would somehow greater explain the narrator's lack of self-awareness and her autocide. (shut up, spell check. it is, too, a word. OED online says so!)

So I think I've lost it. I have read too many romance novels. My mind is now too addled to write literary fiction. At least I'm writing, right? That's swell. If there's any money in fiction at all these days, it's in genre fiction anyhow.

OK. Good things: it's only 1500 words. I think the bit at the end about the pink shoes and shirt that she doesn't remember buying is funny. I like the interaction with her boss, but I think the dialogue is potentially overwritten.

Anyhow. Since I don't live in a town with any of my writing friends anymore, I want you all to email me or call me or facebook message me and play e-workshop with me. I'll gleefully return the favor, and link to your blog from mine, and buy you chocolate when I see you. Or coffee.

Free Short Story: Cliff Hanging

My lover leaves in one of those spectaularly dramatic, painful flurries of shouting and loving and self-loathing. Takes my intestines and pleasure along for the ride. I used to doubt that people really “didn’t see it coming.” I didn’t. That morning we cuddle before work, nuzzle and say love yous. And no joke, two hours after the door snicks shut behind him, my sister calls to say our mom died. It feels like a hangover: I don’t know where I am, and my head throbs in waves, as though my brain literally grows inside my skull. Things aren’t going too well.

I go to work at the greenhouse. It is the day we let loose the Sterlings to eat the Japanese beetles that came in during a fresh air cycle. I am certain to go home with bird shit in my hair, stomping and clutching my fists in organic hatred.

My boss, Geri the Hippie, rolls up on his Vespa and eyes my Subaru.

“When are you going to lose the gas hog?”

“When it quits running.”

He smirks, “I’ll buy you a Prius if you come to dinner with me.”

“Let it never be said that organic farmers are as evolved as their pesticide practices.”

“So that’s a yes?”

“That’s an aphid eating no, Geri.”

“Why do you want to work here if you hate Earth?”

“I hate everything.”

“No you don’t. You love your car.”

“My car does not talk or demand anything from me.” I say, and think a minute, “Also, my car goes harder than it really should after 250,000 miles.”

“That’s what she said.”

“Pig.”

“You’re lucky I’m a forward-thinking feminist. No other boss would let his environmental savages of employees talk to him like that.”

“No other boss would call himself a feminist, then call a woman who works for him an environmental savage.”

I always liked the idea of killing myself. I thought it would be really hard. I never really thought too much about trying, because it seemed certain to fail. I thought that the human spirit would always well up to buoyancy or vomit at the last minute. That the soul would not be snuffed so easily. I liked thinking about the bits of me—the bits that want to die and to live—warring over this cause of life.

I imagined them personified in spandex unitards. Death wore orange, Life wore blue. They pushed each other and wrestled across wood planks by water. A deck, maybe? A pier? I never panned out in my imaginings, only went in for the detail shots, like the way Death’s spandex bunched up in the space where his hip met his thigh as he wrapped one leg around Life to hold her still, squeezing her neck with both his bony, veined hands. And the fine hairs on Life’s cheek as she ground her blushing jaw against the strangling.

I always gave Death the masculine body and Life the feminine. Obvious, but still. Shouldn’t life and death be genderless?

I wake up that morning and look up at the water stains on the ceiling above my bed. One of them looks like a pig blowing smoke out of his face. Maybe, though, it is his silhouette, and he is bleeding from his mouth. A pig death by bludgeoning.

Could I bludgeon myself? It seems unlikely. What if I make a machine? There’s that movie, Taxidermia, where a guy partially Taxidermies himself, then sets up a machine to remove his head at a certain point.

It never occurs to me that feeling nothing is bad. I suspect people who are suicidal must feel the hell out of their feelings. The sadness preceding suicide must be physically painful. It must feel like appendicitis or a urinary tract infection. It must feel unbearably.

I feel nothing. I feel nothing so hard that I think it won’t be possible for me to feel it if my lover returns and my mom comes back to life. I feel superfluous. I am not especially good at my job or especially interesting, and when my mom lived, at least I felt like I provided some joy to her, and at least my lover got half our rent and some orgasms.

So without any real ceremony, I decide to end it. I choose a day that is bleak and gray and humid. I decide that I’ll take a drive after work and find a place, and then I will do it. I will throw myself into traffic, or into the misted river.

There is a bridge that separates north and south halves of the town. The top of the bridge is probably 50 feet from water. The water is gray and choppy. I was never fond of heights, but since I haven’t felt anything in several months, climbing up lacks some of the usual gut churning. I get halfway up, and the hem of my khakis snags at the vee of the wire lattice I’m climbing, I recall that this is a truss bridge from my environmental design course in college. I think fuck it and I let go.

I instantly regret my choice. For the first moment I feel like I’m not going to fall, like gravity is going to just give me this one back. The water below me is this hyper plane of bobbing, cotton clusters. The wind pushes into my sinuses and in the second moment I get that ear flood of roller coaster adrenaline excitement. I feel my skin flush and my hair lift at the exact same moment.

I crack a smile, or maybe a grimace, and that is when the fall starts in earnest. I am high enough up, though, that I have time to remember how to fall into water at high speed without hurting myself.

I point my toes and imagine myself as a pencil. Suddenly I am erect and getting sucked into water that is much colder than I expect in late June. The water’s surface scrapes my cheeks, but I don’t make it to the bottom of the river. I curse my mom’s ghost for insisting on swimming lessons. This totally would’ve worked if I hadn’t had swimming lessons.

I do the crawl stroke to the bank that’s only about 10 yards away and hope I don’t trouble any eels, and I get on the bank and suddenly I have this crystal chill of aliveness. It starts at my toes and radiates up to my forehead and I can’t stop grinning. I laugh. I laugh so hard my right ribs feel like they’re under compression. I look down and notice I’m wearing a pink shirt and shoes and I can’t remember buying them, and I hate pink, so I laugh some more.

A girl on roller skates stops for a second and says, “Fall in?”

I contain my guffaws enough to give her a palsied nod. My chest is full and I feel large and I want to go have a beer with a stranger, apologize to the guy who loved me in college who I didn’t love back, then go get a new lover.

Of those things the most feasible is a beer with a stranger, so I escort myself and my swollen soul and my wet, pink clothes to my favorite dive. I order a Newcastle draft and I scan the bar for strangers.

I notice my pants are so wet they’re dripping onto the floor and there’s this tiny puddle beneath me, and so I don’t start to laugh again, I try to imagine a tiny war hostage undergoing drip torture beneath my pink shoe. That sobers up my mood, and I suck down my Newcastle and order another.

There’s a guy a few seats down who I don’t recognize, so I slide off the stool with a wet-clothes-on-varnish groan and move over next to him.

“Fall in?” he asks.

“Yup.”

“On purpose?”

I blink. I didn’t anticipate that question. “No. Yes. Whatever.”

“I survived one, too.”

“You what? Seriously? What are the odds, man? I mean, I got this Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas feeling right now, and I just wanted to have a beer with a stranger. You’re the stranger and you’re telling me you lived through this, too?”

“Weird”

“Yeah.”

So then I think maybe this guy is just expressing empathy the way some people do, and he’s actually a lunatic, and I think how I need no lunatics or psychopaths, and I pay for my second beer which I suck down to generate some beer warmth for my dripping self, and I slide off my second stool and head for the door.

“Hey wait!” he calls.

I hold up my hand like I’m signaling a cab, and I hit the street.

When I get home, I Google “how to overdose.”

(c) 2011 April Line, April Line Writing

Counter Culture Dancing

Couple things happened in my head while I was dancing my hypothetical balls off at Club Z in Williamsport last night with some of my girlfriends and our DD/supervisor/agent, Tom.

First, I was missing a whole lot during my crippled-by-self-consciousness 20s. Dancing at a gay bar is awesome. I did go dancing at a gay bar once in my 20s, with some gay temporary roommates. I got felt up (and not in a nice way) by some straight dude.

Which is a total quandary. What are the straight people doing at the gay bar? I know, I know. It's a bar, a club, there's dancing and the air is thick with poorly mixed DJ beats and cigarette smoke. The energy is contagious and it's totally counter culture. I guess there're some straight folks (like myself) who get a kick out of being someplace where different is normal. In Williamsport, if you don't want to hang out with the 20-23 set at Cell Block, it's the only place to go dancing.

But what was with the posturing straight men trying to grab my (luscious) bootie, and feeling up Amber, this drag queen who danced with us, and trying to dance with the irrepressible Hillary? What were they posturing? Were they pretend gay or pretend straight? Were they trying to feel us up so as to discern our sex? I feel like mine is fairly obvious. And Amber's was, too, but her girl parts done comparatively well. And Hillary is a feminine, shimmering pixie. Do their weasely minds believe genitals grabbing is more acceptable at a gay bar?

That was what I told myself the first time. But I'm older now and wiser and angrier and more aware of the very real way in which women (and very similarly homosexuals) are second class citizens, even now--in the future! I sincerely believe that most straight men are utter pigs and not to be trusted. And I follow @MsMagazine on twitter, so I get all these news feeds about the high sex-discrimination crimes that happen the world over. Now. In the future!

And when I got home last night and I was a sweaty, vaguely drunk, cigarette stinking mess in bed with my lover, and my body still ticked with energy and glee, when I thought about way in which the fun was kind of marinated in this palpable cultural dischord; I almost wept.

There is no minority for which I have greater sympathy than the transgendered/transvestites. I can't think of a worse affliction than looking in the mirror and seeing the wrong thing. Feeling like your skin got mis-sewn at the factory.

Summer Garden Tomato Soup

First, a little on the choices for this soup. I think that milk in tomato soup is gross. I also think that recipes that fake it with soft bread for thickening are wrong. The texture of soaked bread is godawful.

I used a coarse cheese grater to shred the zucchini and the onion. You could probably also just chop the stuff and then stick blend it, or use a regular blender. I just hate the heck out of cleaning the stick blender and the regular blender. Also, the texture that's missing from a lot of tomato soups is present in spades with the cheese grater method.

Vidalia onions sweeten up beautifully when they're sauteed long time over medium heat. The sweetness of the onions and the queer starchiness of the zucchini do a beautiful job of giving this soup some texture and thickening, without the grodie slime of the soft bread, or the abomination that is just tossing in some milk or cream. There's no roux, and there's only a skosh of oil, so this is actually vegan, and contains almost NO fat, but is still really satisfying & filling.

Recipe: Summer Garden Tomato Soup

1 T olive oil

1 medium vidalia onion

2 large cloves of garlic

2 medium zucchini

1/4 c. fresh sage

1/4 c. fresh basil

2 T fresh oregano

1 t. salt

8 tomatoes from your garden, boiled and peeled, or a big can of san marzano tomatoes

1 bay leaf

1 pinch of tumeric

Heat the olive oil in the bottom of a dutch oven over medium high heat.

Grate the onion, zucchini, and crush the garlic into the oil. Cook, stirring often, until the zucchini has sweated off all its moisture and softened, and the onions are sweet. Stir in the herbs and salt and let it cook for a minute of two until the herbs smell nice.

Crush the tomatoes into the mixture and stir. Add all the juices from the tomatoes or can, and some extra water, too.

Throw in the bay leaf and the tumeric and allow to simmer, uncovered, over medium-low heat for an hour, or until it's reduced a bit. Reduce heat to low and cover to hold until serving.

Remove bay leaf. Makes about 8 servings.

I made some orzo that I stirred in just before serving, which was my original conception, but it was utterly superfluous.

The Quest for Clicks

I'm sitting at Starbucks with Robin Kaye, brainstorming ideas for how to get people looking at our website. We're looking at great blogs by people in and out of the Romance industry.

Here's a great one if you're a working writer, or if you're holding a manuscript in your hands and asking, "What next?"

We also really like Mia Marlowe's Red Pencil Thursday.

Being a full time writer and editor is fun, fun stuff. In what other world could I spend a morning at Starbucks with one of my dear friends, reading blogs about writing?

Tomato Worms

We found these two fellas in our Tomato plant today.

We took a trip wherein our plants didn't get any attention for about 48 hours, and then there was a massive, sideways-blowing storm; so where before our plants appeared to be happy and flourishing, they are now a little worse for the wear.

Our Sage continues to rage, but our tomato plant--on which we found considerable blight earlier in the summer, but which seems now to be under control--can't catch a break. We found these dudes there today.

Amy Winehouse

Seriously? Apparently So.

And I am sad. Really Sad. I enjoyed her work a great deal, and felt an odd kinship with her self-destructive, sexy lyrics.

I may be more hopeful for her if I had any substantial belief in an afterlife, but her passing seems like such a peevish waste.

Random

I bought some stuff from Dick's Sporting Goods lately. Had my first experience with fitting a helmet, fitting a mouth guard, and signing a release form. Seriously. These activities clearly qualify me as an athlete.

It's really difficult to explain to a five-year-old how it's possible that you have money that you can't spend on her.

Tonight is Fajita night.

It's a good idea to get 2-step authentication for the google account.

Healthy lunch makes me too hungry too early as much as unhealthy lunch. Who can win? Not this guy.

A lesson on Basil

Front and Center, this is sweet basil; the basil that can be bought at the regular (non-specialty) grocery store. It is mild and complements tomatoes very well. It is also substituted quite a lot in Thai cooking and can be made into pesto sauce among thousands of other things. We will make it into tea later this summer.

This is the Thai basil. We have been curious about this one. We have not used it yet, but it has a nice, licorice/anise aroma to complement the expected sweet basil scent. We have been told that this is the basil that is used in authentic Thai cooking, though most of the Thai food I've had has used sweet basil.

Here is my little purple basil plant. It smells just like sweet basil. The seed pack (this being the thing that we grew from seeds) said that it was also used ornamentally. The interwebs told me that if we leave the plant alone, it will turn completely green. Shall I hover over it with my dropper of food coloring, I wonder?

And here's our little basil corner of our container garden. Right to left: Sweet Basil, Thai Basil, Purple Basil.

On the Garden

This is my second year growing a garden with vegetables. We decided to grow a salsa garden + herbs. We have blighted tomatoes (sad, but that seem to be flourishing nonetheless), poblano peppers, jalapeno peppers, green peppers. We have herbs: parsley (curly and flat), rosemary, sage, thyme, basil (traditional, Thai, purple), marjoram, oregano, cilantro. Some of our basil returned from the window box of herbs we grew last year.

We are growing it in containers on top of the defunct hot tub that our landlords have promised to take away for the last 3 summers. Last year, we tried to use the hot tub for summer water fun, but it has a leak and needs some restorative work, so it was basically a money suck.

I love the garden. I love it more with a partner. I love especially how the tiny, tiny jalapenos grow up into the large, hot ones; how the tomatoes swell a bit more each day; how the purple basil--the only thing we grew from seeds--has risen and flourished and gets more beautiful each day. I love looking at it three times a day, recycling the fish tank or beer ice water into water for our plants. It makes me feel maternal (without the adverse effects on my body) and like our household is more efficient.

Our rosemary is so giant, it tripled in size, we are going to try to get it big enough to make our Christmas tree.

Another nice thing about growing a garden on an elevated space is that the pest issues are diminished significantly. We have had a few beetles on our basil, but besides that, we have been pest and weed lucky.

More on Reptiland

This guy was cool. This picture is crappy, but he had stuff growing on him. Awesome.

This is Pearl in front of one of the rubber, animatronic dinosaurs
that she could stand to turn her back to.

This is my favorite butterfly. There were others.

These are my favorite snakes.

This is Pearl's new Smile.

She's standing in front of the turtles who we would later find doing the nasty.

Clyde Peeling's Reptiland

This is, without question, the most amazing thing I have seen as a grown up.

Thoughts on Exercising

I have never been an athletic type. I have always rather hated the smug, exercising population, and found them to be too, I don't know, too something annoying.

A thing about being 30: I cannot eat dessert and not gain 5 lbs anymore. Also, I don't have my stand all day job anymore, so I am particularly prone to squishyness. Another thing about being 30: my health is more important to me than it has ever been. I have accepted mortality. I want to see Pearl into college at least.

So I have set about being an exercising person. I take walks. I normally walk 3 miles. I try to walk at a consistent speed of 3.5-4 mph, so I am normally finished in a bit under an hour. I like to do this every day, but occasionally take a day off when my legs hurt too badly. I expect this will stop happening as I continue walking, and also that I will eventually walk more miles in the same amount of time.

Brad and I also play badminton, which, considering the low-impact weight and resistance of the sport, is remarkably good exercise and I always feel it in my sides and tummy the next day.

I used to walk with my friend, Lara. Then life kicked us both in our fannies and now we do not walk together anymore.

Blah blah, the point is, I get it! I have had these eureka moments wherein I catch myself self-talking to "push it" the last mile, or just really wanting to do better than I did yesterday. All the stuff my PE teachers admonished me to do. All the stuff that I always kind of thought, "hmmm. That's weird. Why should I intentionally hurt myself just because my parents' tax money is paying you to tell me to?" The stuff the other girls learned when they played field hockey or whatever other team sport.

Know what? I'm also joining Roller Derby. A team sport. Who knew? It's gonna rule.

I really like moving around. I feel really good when I'm all sweaty after. I love exercising.

I like it so much that today I did research about fat people jogging. People yell at me when I call myself fat, but it's true. I'm at least 50 lbs overweight, and that is counting back to my college low of a size 6, at which I still--weight wise--was in the obese squares on the height/weight charts.

It's okay. I own it, and owning it is the first step to working on it. Take that, chub!

Shameless Self Promotion

My friends and I have started a business. Friend 1. Friend 2.

A book fixing business.

If you have a book and you want it to suck less, you should let us see it. We charge a reasonable fee. If you self-publish your book online, our fee will probably be tax deductible.

You can like us on Facebook. Revisioning Romances.

You can also follow us on Twitter: @RevisioningRs

Or you can email us if you want to know how to get the goods: info@RevisioningRomances.com

Here's a link to our website.

Notes from a Freelancer

I have learned a few things:

1. It's best to troll major metro craigslist for new writing gigs (NY, Chicago, LA).
2. Sometimes, being the master of one's own schedule is dangerous.
3. Working from home opens the door to working all the time, which is a filthy habit to which I am prone.
4. It is no easier to make time for blogging than it was before I was a full time freelancer.
5. Wordpress blog is superior to Blogger. (Sorry, Google. I do love you).
6. People lie about wanting you to do work for them.
7. LinkedIn is a terrific resource.

Happy Announcements:

I am about 5000 words along in my novel. I've stalled working on it, since I have been busy with paid work, but knowing that I get to work on it once I finish my paid work is enough to keep me going.

Some colleagues and I are starting a company to help romance writers polish their drafts. It will be called Revisioning Romances. I'll link you once it's up.

Unhappy Announcements:

There are approximately 300 things I should be doing right now, some of these are laundry.

Maternal Insomnia

It is 2:00 a.m. where I live.

About an hour ago, which was about 3 hours into my sleep for the night, my little girl seemed to sleepwalk into our room, crawl into bed, cuddle up against me, and immediately turn to dead weight. Heavy breathing and all of it. Sweet-smelling little kid noggin, hyper warm, but wiggling, as kids are wont to do.

My romantic partner, who suffers interruptions to his sleep poorly, asked what was the cause of the wiggling, and persisted in vocalizing his discontent until I was good and awake. As I am now.

The sweet child turned on the hall light, and the romantic partner shouted, "What the hell?!" I said, "Hey!" I brought the child back to her room, procured some water for her, and tried going back to the grown up bed. I laid there, stared at the lights that blinked off the ceiling for an hour.

The romantic partner, who can be cuddly in the night, asked me for some cuddles and reminded me that he loves me. I think this was his means of apologizing for being so vocal and impatient and annoyed.

Still. My sleep was interrupted at precisely the right moment that my body believes that I should be awake for the day's work. This may also have something to do with hormones.

Writing and Business Owning

I'm so on a roll on my satirical novel about a church camp and its, um, dramas? that I don't, don't don't want to do my other work, which this week consists of proofreading a romance novel, writing a piece about fish for a newspaper's magazine that is just south of here.

Also, I need a website, and think I'm going to just use WordPress.

Also, I need to buy a url. I wish there was one I could just pay $x.xx for and have forever.

Also, Tooth E.T.s are in the works. See image above.

more online shopping: become.com

It seems to me that Become.com is a one-stop-shop for really anything that can be sent to you in a box. The website is pretty, lots of high resolution photographs that are linked to pages of other items like it. I especially like the all categories link. In the all categories link, there are additional links under each category for top products and top searches.

I’m not sure how the site works, I suspect it is via some magic of database mining and then linking, because the text that appears on the top products page is not formatted consistently. This leads me to believe they’re somehow linking to the external sites from which they sell, for example eBay and Amazon.

Another thing that startles me about Become.com is that they seem to only be a launch pad to other sites, so the deals can be spotty. It’s not like they’re collecting the best deals on the web, then sending you there, it’s like they’re collecting all the things on the web, then sending you there.

Here’re a small smattering of items for which one could shop: in the shoes category, footjoy classics, hightop shoes, nurture shoes. In the books category: contemporary American fiction, chick lit, children’s literature. In the office category: office chairs, storage solutions, desk organizers