the pieces of my life

I’m trying a novel idea with my, uh, novel. When I was writing Continuity, I had pages of notes, Excel spreadsheets trying to keep track of dates and events, and a while when I was sitting with my calculator, playing with, “Wait, if she was born here, then she was how old when he did this, and how old would he have been?” Dates are an important element of Continuity, so it was imperative I kept track, but it was challenging.

For my next novel, which is an historical novel, I’ve created a timeline. I don’t know yet if this will really help, but so far it’s been great because I have lots of room to lay out the back story, real historical events, and pieces of my story. I’m hoping this will help me insure the flow is right, and that I don’t accidentally have events in my story happening out of place with the historical events surrounding them. I’ve been playing with a timeline program called Tiki Toki, and so far it’s been quite easy to use.

This is the first time I’ve had a solid idea of where the novel is going to end. I spent about three years working on Continuity, and I didn’t have the ending for about a year and a half. And then it took that second year and a half to tweak it, perfect it, and get it just where I (or actually the character) wanted it to be (and that’s all before my agent’s revisions and then those rewrites and….).

This month, I plan on using Nanowrimo to get my novel started (National Novel Writing Month: During the month of November, write a 50,000 word novel). I love Nanowrimo. I’ve done it many times in the past. I don’t think anyone can write a novel in a month. Let’s rephrase that. I don’t think anyone can write a solid, well-plotted, well-crafted, interesting novel in a month. But I think that Nanowrimo is fabulous for that initial word dump, for getting past your internal editor and just getting the words down on the page. Starting the novel is the absolute hardest thing to do and Nanowrimo gives you a deadline for doing it. Are you doing Nano? If so, put me down as a writing buddy (my Nano handle is jbrown).

Meanwhile, I’ve got a few thousand words to write today, so I leave you with this thought:

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. –Thomas Mann

Call me Scrooge. Or should it be Ghoulge? I hate Halloween.

We belong to a Conservative synagogue, and some members don’t celebrate Halloween. Oh, sure, they’ll pass out candy to those who ring their door bell. But no dressing up, no going out, no decorations, no frights.

Sometimes I wish we were a more religious family. Like at Halloween. Okay, only at Halloween.

I’ve discussed this before. Costumes traumatize me. Figuring them out. All those parts. Getting them to stay on. Having them be weather appropriate. (“But I don’t want to wear a jacket over it!”) For one stupid night. Too much candy. Kids coming to the door. Little kids are okay, but they get to a certain age where they just get pushy. All those grabby hands. Yes, I said. It may not be the popular opinion but I don’t like trick or treaters. I don’t like costumes. I don’t like Halloween. I do not like it in a box; I do not like it with a fox. I do not like Halloween!

Trick or treating wasn’t even that enjoyable for me as a kid. Oh, don’t get me wrong; I loved the candy. But I hated having to go door to door to ask for it. This, perhaps, is why I hate doing solicitations today. Whenever there’s a fundraiser–at the school, the synagogue, wherever–I say, “I will do manual labor. I will write for you. I will make out a check. But I will do no cold calling, no asking for items for auctions, no looking for donations.” This is what trick or treating is. Soliciting for donations.

Having candy in the house is dangerous for me. I’ve taken to buying our Halloween candy on the day of Halloween. But apparently even that is too late for me, given the trail of Heath Bar wrappers leading from the bag to my computer. I’ve tried buying candy I don’t like, but that doesn’t work, as clearly there is no candy I don’t like.

In past years we’ve had the Switch Witch come to our house. The kids get to fill their candy jars with candy to eat as Shabbat Treats throughout the year, and then they leave the rest for the Switch Witch who exchanges the rest for a small toy. You have to arrange for the Switch Witch to come. Not everyone wants her, so she doesn’t go to everyone’s house. She began coming here in 2006, when Doodles was 3 and Pie was 1. This year, I wanted to try something else.

Me: I want to talk to you about something important. I was thinking, maybe this year we could do something different with the Halloween candy. I know of a mitzvah we can do. [A mitzvah is literally “a commandment” but colloquially “a good deed.”]
Pie: What?
Doodles: Huh!
Me: Well, the Switch Witch generally leaves you a cheap toy, and who knows what she does with her candy. But I was thinking, there are people who actually want this candy. What if instead, I let you each go to Toys R Us and pick out a toy that you actually want, and then we could give your candy to someone who might really appreciate it. Did you know that a 5th grader is collecting some candy to send to Guatemala?
Pie: Why is she sending it to Guatemala?
Me: Uh… Huh. I don’t know. Is there no candy in Guatemala? Yeah, why Guatemala?
Doodles: Duh. Because it’s in Africa and there’s no candy in parts of Africa.
Me: Not quite. Guatemala is in Central America.
Doodles: Oh.
Me: Anyway, I was thinking we could give a few pieces to her for Guatemala and then take the rest and send it to a place that sends it to soldiers who are in Afghanistan. The soldiers don’t have access to things like candy and it would be a real mitzvah.
Pie: That’s a great idea!
Doodles: No, it’s not. I want the Switch Witch.
Pie: I want to do a mitzvah!
Doodles: You know, I don’t think Halloween is really the time to be doing mitzvot.
Me: It’s always time to do mitzvot. But if you’d still like the Switch Witch to come, she can come.
Pie: No, I want to do the mitzvah!
Me: Well, she can come just for the boy.
Doodles: How do you do that?
Me: She’s got a hotline parents call. You just tell her where to go and with whom to exchange treats. I can have her just come to you.
Doodles: Oh. All right. I can skip the Switch Witch.
I really didn’t mean to upset him. I feel like the Grinch Who Stole Halloween.

Meanwhile, my daughter is putting on her Cleopatra outfit, which is a white sleeveless dress. We live outside of Boston. Did you know that we had a Nor’Easter on Saturday night?
Me: Don’t you want to put a shirt under that, so you won’t be cold?
Pie: No.
Me: You’ll be cold.
Pie: I’ll wear a jacket.
Me: How will you get a jacket over that?
Pie: Oh! Well, I guess I’ll just have to be cold!
Me: If that’s what you want.
Pie: Yeah, I’ll just be cold.
Me: Okay, you’re a big girl. If that’s what you decide, then I’m okay with that.
Pie: Yep. And if you have to hear me complain, then you’ll just have to hear me complain!
I feel like she’s missing the point.

The freakin’ candy corn is calling my name and I can’t stop eating it although I’m not hungry, having already consumed the night’s Mummy Dogs and drinks with wormy ice cubs.

Halloween. Someday I’ll get to be that crotchety old woman, who just yells at the kids to get the freak off her front porch. For now, I’ll just be the crotchety middle aged woman handing out treats. Happy freakin’ Halloween.

Lately I’ve been in a Dorothy Parker state of mind (minus the suicidal thoughts). No matter what I do, it always comes back to Dorothy Parker. She’s appeared here on occasion in my blog, as long-time readers will note. I first discovered her in high school, and throughout the years, I’ve felt her lure. For my research on my next novel–which will take place in the 1930s–I’ve been reading a lot about the Depression years as well as reading of the Depression years, which of course includes old New Yorkers and Dorothy Parker.

Whenever I think of Dorothy Parker and the New Yorker, I think of my paternal grandfather and his stack of magazines that he worked his way through, reading them cover to cover even when they were decades beyond current. Reading things from that era, I can hear my grandfather speaking; his language had the same rhythms, the same refinement as the literature. People were erudite in those days, their vocabularies so much richer. If someone spoke today in the language of the 1930s, people would think he was putting on airs. Oh, excuse me. That phrase is not really used today, is it? They would think he was showing off.

Tonight, I revisited Dorothy Parker, but when I went to look for my trusting Viking Portable from 1980something, I couldn’t find it. I did, however, find a second copy that I didn’t realize I had, the seventeenth edition printed in 1964 (originally published in 1944). The introduction alone, by W. Somerset Maugham, is amazing, and a topic for another post.

Flipping through it, I saw that it belonged to my maternal grandmother, who is not someone I associate with Dorothy Parker. Yet when I started re-reading it for the first time in over a decade, I saw where my grandmother might have been drawn to it. All the pretense for society, the masking of true emotion. That was my grandmother. My grandmother always underlined her books, and I scour those notations trying to decipher what she related to, what she found interesting.

I have inklings, and I’ll draw conclusions when I finish the book, plot out all my grandmother’s lines. But I need to get into a 1930s state of mind. So I switch from martinis to whiskey sours (Dorothy’s favorite drink), place a hat on my head, and travel back to the 1930s.

*”If you don’t have anything nice to say, come sit by me…” —Dorothy Parker**

**EDITED: My father insists this quote should be attributed to Alice Roosevelt Longworth. My web searches indicate it’s Longworth. And Parker. And even Gertrude Stein. So I will leave you with something that is definitively Dorothy Parker:

Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)

Bear with me folks; over the next few (what? days? weeks? minutes?) somethings, I’m going to be changing my blog around. I need to find something that’s a better fit for me. I hate this layout, but I’ve been too lazy to change it. However, sitting around with a wicked cold on a rainy day seems like it could be a good time to play around a bit. Sorry if things get a little wonky….

I HAVE A NIECE! Yes, this is big news in our house. I didn’t think it would ever happen, given that the Tweedle Twirp and her boyfriend of almost 20 years have declared themselves child-free (because apparently “childless” is not P.C.). But Adam’s brother has decided that procreation is not a bad thing, and my kids now have a first cousin.

The beautiful little girl, who shall henceforth be referred to as Dutch—Dutchie while she’s a baby—is healthy and sweet. I think I surprised my brother-in-law when I deferred on holding her, but as I had amply warned his wife, I don’t do babies till they have neck control (my kids have no such compunctions). Seriously, yes, I know I’ve had two of my own, but babies still scare the sh*t out of me.

Other random thoughts:
We asked Pie, who still has a nightly habit of crawling in to our bed:
Me: Who do you think will stop sleeping with her mom and dad first? You or Dutchie.
Pie: I don’t know!
Me: I bet Dutchie.
Doodles: Yeah.
Pie: You know, it’s all your fault! You put me in your bed when I was a baby and you got me in the habit of it! You can’t blame me! You did it!
Adam: I think she’s got you there.

Traffic on the way home from New Hampshire today was fierce. My boy said: “This f*king traffic is ridiculous!”
My daughter replied, “At least he used ‘f*cking* appropriately.”
Yes, I’ve raised them right.

My town has an e-mail list. Two, actually. A town-wide one and one specifically for parents. The one for parents has had a thread about allergen-free Halloween candy. If your kid has an allergy, I’m going to do my best to have some safe candy for him or her. I generally keep Skittles or the like on hand. But someone wrote in on the list saying she is picky about what her kids eat (no artificial flavorings, colorings, or preservatives) and she’d love it if people offered “healthy treats.” Really? Look, I have the last kids on the face of this planet who have never eaten at a McDonald’s (I actually have Pie scared of it: “The food has chemicals in it!!”) but even I let them have treats. If the candy is going to make your child sick, I’m happy to try and accommodate you, because no kid should be denied the fun of trick or treating. But if you just have a stick up your ass, well, too bad. Keep your kid home.

Oh, do you hear that? I think it’s Pie. Making her way to our bed….

One of the dilemmas writers have is knowing where to draw the line when writing about family. Our local writing center, Grub Street, has occasionally offered classes about how to write about family, what to do when family objects to their portrayals, and the like.

This hasn’t been something I’ve worried about in the past. My father has practically begged me to write about our family once everyone who would care about it is dead. Or more specifically, once he’s dead and doesn’t have to hear about it from everyone (this is not me being morbid, folks, I swear. My father really does talk like this). Of course, I should point out that by “family” he means “my mother’s family,” so he has less at stake here.

I do write about family, but more often, I write about things that most families wouldn’t love. Not my family. My essay just came out in the Bellevue Literary Review, and I sent my parents a copy. It’s about me. In it, I have sex. With someone who wasn’t my boyfriend. And I get sick from having sex. In a foreign country. I admit, I had a few twinges about showing it to them, but hey, I’m 43 years old. I lived a long life before I got here. They know it. Now they know it in print. It didn’t bother them at all.

But I have to wonder, now, what will my kids think. Of course I didn’t show them the essay. And I won’t. But someday, when they’re adults, they may come across it. And while I don’t mind, I have a feeling they might. My mother, the artist, frequently has made pieces with a sexual bent, and I remember when Richard, my 10th grade boyfriend, came to pick me up and asked, “Why are there French ticklers in your front hallway?” Okay, the first thing I had to do was figure out what French ticklers were. But then I was mortified. My mother was amused. (The sculpture was of this era, in case you’re curious.) I can imagine the same for my kids. I’ll be amused. They’ll be horrified.

But what about writing about the kids. An essay appeared a couple of years ago about a woman who wrote about her son’s drug addiction. He was not happy with the book, and she was lambasted by the public for writing it. Yet writing scathing things about family is nothing new. Writing things that family members get angry about is also nothing new. I feel like I’m a little inured. Again, I refer you to my mother. She’s made my family fair game in her art (it’s hard to see, but there are some pictures in here of Adam and the boy; she’s also done tons of the Tweedle Twirp); I know she expects me to do the same.

At this point, the kids say things to me like, “Are you going to blog about that?” But they’ve never read the blog. And I’d like to keep it that way for at least a little while. I’ve definitely censored myself since having kids. As bitchy as I can get, I used to be far worse. I’ve stopped singling out people who annoy me, as it was one thing when I had to worry about them hating me (I never cared). I do worry about them taking it out on my kids.

For now, I’ll keep writing. About sex. About family. About life. And I’ll try not to censor myself. Because the kids are going to need something to talk about in therapy!

I don’t talk much about religion here, because my feelings are so ambivalent. But while I’m not sure where I stand in terms of my beliefs in a higher power, I have strong attachments to tradition. I love knowing that what I’m doing has been done countless times before me by my ancestors. My father rejected religion, yet as a child he was bar mitzvahed, and I know he attended Yom Kippur services. My grandparents before him did, as did those on my mother’s side. And I know their parents did as well. We could keep going back, but what’s the point?

The closest I come, though, to a spiritual connection is on Yom Kippur, one of the high holidays. I’ve been fasting on Yom Kippur for about the past 17 years. I started in grad school. I’m not strict—I allow myself to drink—but I don’t eat, watch TV, get on my computer, and the like. And we go to synagogue. All of us.

Kol Nidre is my second favorite service of the year. My synagogue has begun a tradition of, just before sunset, before the start of Yom Kippur, of having Kol Nidre played on a viola (once sunset starts, playing an instrument is not permitted). The melody is so hauntingly beautiful. (This is the most famous version, Neil Diamond’s version in The Jazz Singer)

Kol Nidre is the beginning of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. Kol Nidre means “all vows” and it’s a dissolution of all vows made between man and God. It begins the 25-hour fast of Yom Kippur.

But my favorite service is Ne’ilah, which is the closing of Yom Kippur. It is said that on Rosh Hashanah, God writes the names in the Book of Life and on Yom Kippur, God seals the book. Ne’ilah is the closing of the gates on the Days of Awe, the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur when we’re supposed to make amends to the people we’ve done wrong. Ne’ilah is when we make our final confessions, when we’re invited, individually, to approach the ark (the place where the Torah is kept) to make a personal prayer, when we sing Avinu Malkenu, a song that sends chills up my spine, when we make Havdalah (the separation of the holiday/Shabbat and the next day). For our Havdalah, the kids, who had been listening to stories in another room, are given glow sticks and the lights in the sanctuary are dimmed as the kids walk through up to the front. And when Havdalah is complete, a final shofar blast is sounded, one long blast, done by everyone with a shofar in the room, signaling, “This is it. The book is sealed. The gates to heaven are closed.” I leave Yom Kippur feeling revived, rather than hungry.

Our synagogue has a tradition, every Shabbat, which Yom Kippur fell on this year, of reciting the names of all those Americans who died that week in Afghanistan and Iran. The list always seems too long, although of course, one name would be too long, and I’m in shock every time I hear it how many men and women are still dying overseas.

I’m not one to make note of anniversaries. Not sure why, but I tend to let them slide. But I feel compelled to mention that the 10-year anniversary of this blog just passed. I had actually forgotten about it, until I was listening to the names, ages, and hometowns of the soldiers killed, and it reminded me that when I first started this blog, the cloud of 9/11 hovered over it, and I was concerned with my friend who had Anthrax released in his office, consumed by the NY Times reports of the people who died in the bombings, all while trying to plan my own wedding and start the next segment of my own life.

This blog has seen me through a lot. Our wedding. Our move from Seattle to the Boston area and the purchase of our house. HBS. More HBS. And yet more HBS.

This blog has seen me through a child. Another child. And all the other writing, vacation, family, crises, life events that have occurred in the past decade.

Ten years ago, Adam and I attended Yom Kippur services at the Hillel at the University of Washington. We spent the day attending services, fasting, reading, and generally feeling introspective. Just the two of us.

Yesterday, Adam, Doodles, Pie, and I attended Yom Kippur services at our synagogue. We attended services, the grown-ups fasted, and for the first time, all of us read (Pie can really read now!) and some of us felt, occasionally introspective.

If there was poetic justice in the world, this would be a good time to ends this blog. It’s been a decade. Everything has changed. Yet nothing has changed. The gates are closed. The book is sealed.

But poetic justice was never my style. So I’ll stick around. For ten more years? Who knows. But at least for the foreseeable future.

G’mar chatima tova. May you be sealed for a good life.

I can now get AppleCare to take care of my, um, accidents! It says specifically in this article, “So if you drop your iPhone in the toilet, which happens way more than you think it would, don’t fret.” Oh, I know how much it happens! You go to sit on the toilet, the phone is in your back pocket, it slips out as you pull your pants down, it falls into the toilet. Easy breezy!

Of course, Adam pointed out that the new AppleCare will be $99. And, he wrote me, “Of course for $99 we could also buy you pants with a button in the back.”

Harumph.

Tuesday
Me: Have you ordered my iPhone 5 yet?
Adam: You know they may not announce an iPhone 5. There’s talk that it’ll be a iPhone 4s.
Me: I. Want. My. iPhone. 5. NOW!
Adam: Okay, Veruca.

Tuesday afternoon:
Other people at dance class were talking about phones, so I jumped in.
Me: I totally want a new iPhone.
Friend at dance class: What are the new features that you’re interested in?
Me: My favorite feature is that it hasn’t been dropped in a toilet.

Wednesday
Adam: So seriously, do you want me to order you a new iPhone 4s?
Me: YES!
Adam: Which one do you want?
Me: Any one that hasn’t been dropped into a toilet.
Adam: Yet….

For those who have been with me during the misery of the blurbage process, I found this article, “Six Writers Tell All About Covers and Blurbs” to be really comforting. I paricularly like Mark Jude Poirier‘s take on it:

Asking for blurbs is humiliating and horrible. If your editor and or publicist can do it for you, you’re lucky. If left on your own, ask writer friends or professors. Because I know how awkward it is to ask for blurbs, this is what I usually say when I’m asked to blurb someone’s book: “I’d be happy to blurb your book, but are you sure you don’t want to ask someone with a fan base that isn’t limited to his mother’s book club?” If you ask someone for a blurb, and they write you a decent one, use it! I once was asked to write a blurb for a friend so I diligently reread his novel—I had read earlier drafts. He didn’t use my blurb, which was a good blurb, damn it! I would have understood if my blurb had been knocked off the jacket by blurbs from Philip Roth and Salman Rushdie and Annie Proulx, but no; my blurb was knocked off by blurbs from writers just as obscure as I am. Feelings check: hurt.

And with that thought in mind, I am officially going to not mention anything else about my novel until a) my agent sells it or b) my agent tells me it’s not going to sell. She has not yet sent my novel out on submission, but the entire thing is simply too stressful to think about, so I’m pushing it out of my mind and focusing on my next novel.

Which, by the way, is also extremely stressful. I find that once I have a rhythm going, I love to write. But these first steps, when I’m figuring out my character, trying to plot out the action, I’m a bundle of nerves. I read too much, trying to do research, most of which is never used. I obsess too much, toying with the characters in my mind while I’m running in the mornings. I jot too much, and I end up with random pieces of paper with strange lines of dialogue I’ve overheard or an idea I thought of. At some point, it all comes together, but it hasn’t yet for me. I have two main characters in my next novel. One I have a very clear idea of who she is. The other is still a foggy notion for me. I know some basic facts, but I don’t know her, and until I know her, I can’t be sure what she’s going to do. As my agent so wisely told me, the plot doesn’t drive the character; the character must drive the plot. In other words, what your character does must make sense, must move the plot forward. You can’t simply change your character to make sense of a plot.

Now if only my character would come out of hiding. I can just barely glimpse her….