Category: Minutiae

Recently, I responded to a writing prompt, , by Ann Linquist. I think that I will be expanding and reworking this story. Leave a comment on Ann’s site or here if you like it as well.

I will post the reworked story on this blog later in the month. Keep writing.

I have been meeting with a writing group over the last few months. Each of us has a varied amount of experience and skill. When we started the group we introduced ourselves and stated what type of novel or what genre we are writing. I normally start with “Not a Romance.” Then I go on to say other things about the novel that I am so diligently working towards completion. Curiously, I thought that writing this blog entry and not writing my novel still defines ‘diligent’. That may point to the irony of this blog entry in its entirety.

Now, I have tried to clarify the genre of my novel, taking into account that it will need to be marketed. The genre helps to establish where it will be placed on the bookshelf in the store and how to sell the book to potential buyers, if not readers as well. The genre is an all encompassing tool for the sales-folk. I am not writing an allegory, apologue (although that sounds fun) or a traditional adventure with questing and what-not. Nope, this story has a comfortable milleu with uncomfortable and sometimes horrific situations. Struggle. Death. Supernatural Influence. These are all things the protagonist must deal with. Still, I wonder where to ply my genre label. Is it a crime, mystery, or horror? I wasn’t sure how to make the choice. But, it is most certainly not a romance. In my need to research, I looked up a list of genre to help me make my decision. What a mistake. It is insane the number of fiction genre that are out there. I mean come on, Mathematical Fiction cannot be a real genre. In fact that hardly makes sense anyway. It is like saying bad banana pudding. That just doesn’t happen. If it is banana pudding it is by definition not bad. So, how can anything mathematical be fiction.

That made it easy to not look at that list anymore. I looked up the word romance in the prestigious dictionary Merriam-Webster. I was only slightly surprised to see that the first definition to be something that I thought would be further down the list: a medieval tale based on legend, chivalric love and adventure… The second definition the one I want to talk about we will get to in just a second. The third definition: a love story especially in the form of a novel, seems to be the thing we most attribute to the word. That is what I think that most people believe they are saying when they use the term in relation to a story.

Now to the second definition: a prose narrative treating imaginary characters involved in events remote in time or place and usually heroic, adventurous, or mysterious. Holy novel, Batman! That is pretty much what everyone is writing. It doesn’t say heart-pounding erotic situations with insanely beautiful people. Rippling, muscled men who fetch an entire litter of cutie-pie kittens from a tree while keeping their hair perfectly combed and then grabbing the uncertain — but immediately lovestruck — woman by the waist… Ack!

I am not one to write much about the lava-hot, burning romance of the heart. Nor will I indulge in a fantastical, long voyage rife with adventure in search of a lost love. However, in truth, most — if not all, stories are about love in some manner. We can avoid the gushy or erotic and still have the love that a story needs. For what emotion can drive someone to do more than they are capable – other than love? That being said, I don’t think that even love can keep your hair perfectly combed while climbing into a tree with a bunch of tiny, albeit cute, Freddy Krueger in training cats.

You can derive any emotion from love. Hate, vengeance, sorrow all of these are bound by the remnants of a love either lost, stolen or denied. Who can say that any story worth any amount of time reading isn’t therefore a romance. Even after this little revelation, possibly despite it, I will still say that ‘I am not writing a romance novel’. I flipped a coin and chose ‘Horror.’ It sounds better to me than ‘Legitimate Farce,’ which I am likely to submit as new genre.

Not many people would consider the pre-prepubescent musings of a 7 year old child. However, at our house we do not have the luxury of denying him is take on most matters. Our youngest sees the world through an imaginary film that coats his vision and thoughts with play and some rather deep introspections. He is quite humorous in his delivery and … why not? Granted, this is the child that said his brain was removed shortly after birth. In his words, “when he was young.” To only be replaced with a mouse that pushes buttons. Sometimes “Good” buttons. Sometimes “Bad” buttons. You just never know what that little rodent is going to do.

A recent comment he made to his mother on the way to school was somewhat profound, now that I think about it. He said that when they start to grade his papers next year in the third grade, he wants to get A+’s. He thought a bit more and added “Bad grades should be Z’s instead of F’s. There’s a lot of letters that they aren’t using.” A lot of letters indeed. I tried to imagine the fine tuning that would be required in our education system that would care to evaluate the “Proof of Enlightenment/Education” to a twenty-six point scale. The percentage of an evenly-scaled platform puts each grade at slightly less than four points (3.8 and some change). When I went to grade school, our “A” was capped at 95 points. Anything below that was not an “A”. We also were forced to walk uphill to and from school. Children have the freedom of a whole five more percentage points in the current grading scale and rarely walk to school at all. Geez.

My son had another point of view this week that I thought applied to his deep understanding of life. It is hard to get your kids to drink enough water. They always want the sweet drinks. Me too. As one of those “mean” things that I do, I will make my kids drink a glass of water before they can have the lemonade or root beer that they are wanting. Terrible, I know. Occasionally, one of my bright children try to find ways to get out of it. My rodent-controlled son made a succession of attempts this particular time. His first excuse was the water had too much air or something in it that was making him burp. Throw in the visualization of him trying to suppress a belch. It was pathetic. Seven year old boys have no idea how to suppress a belch. They only know how to extend the throat and make them louder than their friends or big brother. As a male, I don’t think that you normally pick up that skill until you are married. I gave him that fatherly-look that you give a child when you want them to just drink-the-dang-water. He took a swig and ran his finger down the outside of the glass. “Daddy, I can’t drink this water. It is too.” He paused there and looked at his finger with a droplet of condensation from the glass on it. “It’s too damp.”

Laughing at your child is something we cherish in this family. My giggles were followed by his and we resolved that he should drink the “damp” water and he could have the equally “damp” lemonade.

I wanted to take a break from the novel today and give you at little post on something “different.” I did it. Now, off I go to add more words the manuscript. Keep writing and reading. It’s healthy – or so I am told. So is drinking “Damp” water.

I noticed that it has been over a month since I last posted. I know that disappoints the one or, well, the one of you that might look here for something every now and again. Never fear, I have something to post.

I hate to admit it. However, I pretty much stopped writing over the holidays. A good many factors contributed to my lack of effort in writing the novel and my short stories. I put all of those reasons into a little brown paper bag, set them on my neighbors front porch, lit them on fire and ding-dong-ditched. Now, that felt better. Unfortunately, my neighbor wasn’t home. When the fire trucks pulled away, the front side of his house was all crispy. He wanted to paint it anyway.

On a lighter note, I got my first couple of rejections for short stories that I had submitted for publication. No surprise really. The first rejection came from an ultra-short story, 250 words, I wrote called Dueling Pies. I submitted it to the wrong place. The story didn’t fit the publication. Honestly, I am not sure where that story should be published. I would think a nice little magazine loosely related to food might do. I will think on it a little more and try again elsewhere. The second rejection didn’t surprise me either. I tried to cram Tin Roof into a thousand words. I am grateful for the feedback that came with the rejection. Although I didn’t understand one of the comments completely. I had attempted to put together something a little Rod Serling’ish. Unfortunately, I might have to agree on the comments. It came across a little cliché. I still like the story. However, it does need improvement.

The confusing comment I got stated “… the writing style consisting of short, standard sentences was tiresome after the fairly long first paragraph…” I am not sure what that means. Granted the first sentence consisted of only seven words. The second contained twenty-five. The average word count per sentence in the first paragraph is 12.79. The Lexical Density is over 75% with a Gunning-Fog index of 5.6 or 7.0, depending on the algorithm used. That means there is a higher percentage of content words over functional words while maintaining easy readability. Now, those are just algorithms used to help analyze the lexical nature of text. No one expects those to rival a person reading it for themselves. In retrospect, I should break the first paragraph into multiple paragraphs. The sentence length issue might really be a feel for the length of the first paragraph, which is a bit long for the story.

I think that it was awesome that I got comments with the rejection. I hope to get more like that in the future. It made me look at the text and the story in a different way. I don’t think any of us could expect to please every reader all the time. We just need to place our stories so that the readers who will enjoy them can find them.

Keep writing and reading. After my little hiatus, I am writing again.