Flash fiction: Raptor Seeks Prey

I wrote this a while ago for my writing group.  We were writing flash fiction about velociraptors.

Raptor seeks prey

Hey what’s up ladies you can call me V this is my first time on this online dating thing so be gentle with me LOL just kidding bring it I’m not scared of anything well except asteroids don’t know why those things just freak me out LOL well I guess I should tell you some stuff about myself I’ve got a muscular build and old fashioned values by old fashioned I mean Cretaceous Period but don’t get me wrong I’m a fun-loving guy I love hunting and spending time outdoors especially at night and I’m looking for a girl who can keep up with me someone who can handle my lifestyle I like girls with some meat on their bones and I don’t care if you don’t like to cook ‘cause I’m on the primal diet I mean for real not like your loser ex oh and on that topic don’t bring drama into the relationship ‘cause I don’t have time for that and I’ll disembowel the dude and then slash all his tires with my sickle claw for good measure ‘cause that’s how I roll so if you crave a little danger in your life send me a message just remember I like my women like I like my meat RAW and QUIVERING LOL just kidding well maybe not you’ll have to find out oh and any of you planning to message me bitching about my grammar well for your information I’m from Mongolia and this is my second language my first language is REEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWR and if you give me a chance I’ll make you bilingual too.

Summer adventures

So, I've been pretty quiet here lately. Oops!  I've been working more, and teaching theater to summer camp kids (which, though the teaching part is only 1.5 hours per week, involves a lot of preparation...between the prep work and the effort to keep the class from complete chaos I have developed a very deep respect for Real Teachers).

Also, I had a short but sweet prolific writing period last month, when I wrote three short stories: one of fairly average story length, one flash fiction, and one super short flash fiction for a contest, which I just found out I won.  So that was neat.

The Gritty, Coming-Of-Age Short Story Plot Generator For Male Writers

Are you a dude who would like to write a gritty, coming-of-age short story?  Considering the market for these is seemingly endless, why not?  Well, I've made it easy for you.  Simply combine the following elements, in the order you choose:

• An Awkward Sexual Encounter
• Drinking or Drug Use
• An Asshole Male Friend
• A Fight

Notes:
1. The protagonist is a young male (duh).
2. To add spice, this story could take place in, say, the 50s or the 80s, or, you know, whenever you, the male writer, were your protagonist's age.
3. To add additional spice, the protagonist could be Jewish (if the writer is Jewish) or Catholic (if the writer is Catholic), or...no, never mind, just pick one of those two.
4. The fight must be a physical fight (i.e. fist fight).  Weak, boring verbal arguments do not count.
5. The drinking/drug use could fall anywhere on a scale of Boone's Farm to Heroin, depending on how gritty you want to be.
6. The protagonist may be an asshole, but the Asshole Male Friend must be more of an asshole.
7. For economy, you may combine these elements.  It's always a great choice to have the protagonist and the Asshole Friend get drunk/high together and then get in a fist fight, preferably because one of them had an Awkward Sexual Encounter with the other's girlfriend or mom or something.
8. If the writer is gay, the Awkward Sexual Encounter can occur between the protagonist and the Asshole Friend.  This has the added bonus of being extra-gritty AND allowing the writer not to include any female characters whatsoever.


You can write several versions and make something of a career of Gritty, Coming-Of-Age short stories.  But if you get ambitious, feel free to just repeat the elements over and over again, and you've got yourself a Gritty, Coming-Of-Age Novel.  But you'll probably need to add a death somewhere in there, too.

Jambalaya Writer's Conference

I spent yesterday down in the lovely swamps of Houma, Louisiana at a one-day little gem of a writer's conference. I've attended parts of the Tennessee Williams and Faulkner Literary Festivals in the past, on an a la carte sort of basis - sitting in on a couple of readings and panels, but this was the first literary conference that I've attended from start to finish (well, not quite...I skipped the wine social at the end of the day because I had a long drive ahead). This conference is very reasonably priced, I think it was $35 for the entire day, meals included. It was quite the bargain!

I decided to branch out from my usual genre(s) and check out some sessions on poetry, picture books, and writing children's books in verse. These turned out to be fascinating, especially the verse books one, which was led by a woman named Caroline Starr Rose. I was mostly unaware of the re-emergence of verse novels for kids and teens, but now I'm re-imagining one of my (many) works-in-progress in this format. I'd heard of Rose's book, May B., and now it's on my must-read list. I wish I'd brought more cash or a checkbook for the book fair, so I could have purchased it there. I'm so accustomed to using my credit card that I didn't anticipate not being able to buy books with it at the conference. I only had enough cash on hand to buy one book, and I chose a book of poetry by Louisiana's poet laureate Julie Kane, who was charming in person, to give to my Aunt when she visits us later this month.

The conference took place in the breathtaking beautiful Terrebonne Parish Library. Seriously, this may have been one of the best libraries I've ever seen. I probably could have spent a day there even with no literary conference! Other highlights of the day included the hilarious keynote speaker, Rick Bragg, and "The American Idol of first pages" panel, where agents, editors, and successful authors gave helpful feedback on the first pages of attendees' manuscripts. I didn't submit a page for this event, but it was still helpful to hear their feedback on others' work. I had submitted an excerpt from my novel to the conference's fiction contest, and won Honorable Mention. So that was cool.

Fellow Louisiana writers, check this event out next year! It's got a friendly, helpful vibe and you get a lot of bang for your buck.

The dust has settled.

I gave a massage yesterday for the first time in months. I'm going back to work soon (on a very part-time basis) and I was worried that I'd forgotten my basic routine and/or lost my touch. It's incredible what the body remembers - I couldn't think my way through my massage, but most of the time my hands and arms seemed to remember what to do. I set up the front room of our house as a guest room/massage room, and found it to be a great space to work in. Lit a candle, put on some music, and did my thing.

It helped that the client was my mom :)

Anton is a relatively happy baby, and is quite content to be my companion when I go to the grocery store or the Farmer's Market, or out for walks. And when we're home, he loves to play in his baby gym. Observe:



I've started on a new project, a theater thing. It will be a collaboration with one of my closest friends, and we're excited about it. I'm in the script writing phase now. I find that I don't have many hours to devote to it, but when I do find a bit of time, I make the best of it. Last week I sneaked off to Starbucks for a couple of hours by myself, and hand-wrote several pages at a frenzied pace.

I've been thinking about the future, and how to balance work and creativity and mothering. That silly struggle women's magazines have been writing about for decades now. I want to find a way to feel challenged, make some money, and spend plenty of time with Anton throughout his childhood. This new theater project, if it works out, would hopefully be a long-time gig, and help me achieve that goal.

Anton's napping, I'd better get back to that goal-achieving work.

The state of me.

For the first time in nearly a year, I am starting to feel "myself" physically. My energy level is up, I have a spring in my step when I walk, all that good stuff.

I have friends who are pregnant now who seem to be feeling fine, and maybe I'm just a whiny baby, but really from the beginning of my pregnancy I started feeling like crap, and pretty much felt that way to varying degrees until, oh, now (over 2 months since I gave birth).

I felt big and sluggish and tired throughout my pregnancy. Then I had to heal from a c-section while caring for a newborn. It's good to put all that behind me. I've been taking daily walks with Anton in the baby carrier. I'd enjoy some different scenery than this subdivision, but at least the weather is nice.

It's odd to me that I can both adore my baby to bits and miss him when I'm away from him for, like, an hour (which is pretty much the longest I've been away from him), AND at the same time miss my "old life." But, that's where I'm at.

Last night, I had quite the ordeal, trying out a new recipe for dinner that turned out to be more complicated than I'd anticipated. Anton was tired but only sleeping in 10 minute increments, then screaming for me, then I'd nurse him, then back to sleep (for 10 minutes). It was really frustrating and cooking dinner took forever. After we'd finally eaten, I felt so exhausted by the whole thing...then I felt depressed that the central challenge of my life these days is cooking dinner with an infant. This time last year, I was working on my Fringe Festival show.

I'm going to try venturing out for longer periods of time, so I can do more creative stuff. I plan to start attending writer's group again, while David watches Anton. I have a lot of pumped milk stashed in my freezer and Anton has been okay with a bottle the few times we've tested it out. I'm hoping to start doing some massage soon, as well.

I've been trying to write, but I can basically only do it when Anton naps, which is also when I need to do laundry (cloth diapers = lots of laundry), eat, cook, etc. I got a dictation app for my iPhone, I'm going to try writing via dictation while nursing. We'll see.

I go crazy without creative outlets. I'd love some tips from experienced artist moms on how to make this work!

I am proud to note

...that after yesterday morning's dose of angst, I sat down with a few drafts of a short story I attempted to write in 2009, and rewrote it. It took me about twelve hours. It will need revising, but it felt like a good day's work.

David was encouraging me to write short stories on Thursday night. He pointed out that I have a tendency to "start big." For example, my first foray into theater directing was a classic but rarely-tackled LONG Russian play with a cast of seventeen. I was not entirely happy with the results (though it was a major learning experience). My next directing project was a shorter piece of my own, with a much smaller scope. It was more successful.

I do believe in following where the Muse leads. I directed that first play because it was a longtime dream of mine. I wrote my novel because the idea wouldn't let me go. And although I had written a novella in high school, I'd only been writing play scripts since college. So, logically, a short story (or several) would have been a good step. But I didn't have any ideas for short stories.

I took a writing course in 2009, where I was required to write a short story. I developed some interesting characters and a somewhat creative plot. And then I came up with two different bad endings for it, and gave up. I related the plot to David during our conversation, and he said, "that is a damn good plot." I should note that David does not like all of my ideas. And is quite blunt, as a general rule. So this was significant.

David also thought I needed to leave my novel alone for a while, because I was obsessing, and after all I'd just finished the 16 billionth round of revisions on it. He thought I needed to work on other things.

So, back to the short story I went. Yesterday was one of those great writing days where twelve hours felt like twenty minutes. Other than a disappointing excursion to the Winn Dixie (which apparently does not sell tofu), I wrote all day. David called to tell me there was a barbecue at work, and he thought he'd stay there for dinner. It was for the best, because I hadn't cooked anything yet anyway, and besides, I wanted to make tofu.

So he had grilled steak with his co-workers and I heated up a can of baked beans and got back to my writing. And I finished the new draft of the story, and all was well.

What I know and what I feel.

I was thinking a lot yesterday about my artistic goals. I'm looking forward to applying to grad programs, but it's hard to decide what exactly to study when my interests are so varied. The interests in question are centered around writing and theater, so it's not exactly all over the map, but still.

I was asking myself: what is the area in which I have the most to offer? What do I want to learn about most? What have I most enjoyed doing in the past? There is no one answer to these questions.

I know that the best thing I can do right now is to take advantage of the (ever-fleeting) time I have while I finish incubating this baby. I know that obsessing over things I wish I'd done differently in past projects is a waste of time. I know that the more I continue to create, the better I will get.

Still, it is frustrating sometimes. Even though I know all these things, how I feel is that I want to already be brilliant and recognized for it! Maybe it's silly, but it's true. I'm reading Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin for the Atlantic's book club I mentioned earlier, and as I read I keep thinking, damn, she's good. I am not as good as her. Well, of course I'm not. She's Margaret freaking Atwood! Still, it makes me sigh and look at my writing projects and tweak and edit and rewrite sentences and then sigh again.

Oh well, back to work.

The importance of revision

I went to Jazz Fest again yesterday. The weather was lovely, Cyndi Lauper was great, and it was my guy's first time there, so it was pretty neat all around.

I recently finished another round of revisions on the novel I've been working on for two years now. I was so proud of myself when I wrote the first draft in three months, but little did I know that revisions would take much, much longer than that original draft. Of course, I haven't been working on it constantly during the revisions phase. I took breaks for months to work on theater projects, and this turned out to be quite helpful, because when I returned to my manuscript I had established some necessary distance from it.

But back to Jazz Fest. I saw something there yesterday that reminded me of the importance of revision. A musician announced that he was going to perform a song that he'd written "about three hours ago." Then he proceeded to start and stop the song more than once, to complain about the sound mixing (and tell the sound tech "You're killing me, here!") and to communicate with the band backing him on stage regarding what he wanted them to play. Once it became clear that he was actually going to proceed with the song (at this point, the tent began to empty out - some people had already given up on this guy) he started singing some of the worst lyrics I have ever heard. I turned to my mom, sitting next to me, and she said "I think he really needs to work on his lyrics." We ended up leaving the tent before that song ended. By the looks of it, most of the other audience members had already had the same idea.

Now, it is entirely possible that this guy is capable of writing good lyrics. I had never heard of him before and am not familiar with his work, but he did seem to be a technically skilled musician. The song was about something he clearly felt passionate about. But it was just not working. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is because he had just written the song, and was full of I-just-wrote-something glow, and didn't have any perspective on it yet.

I wonder if, a few months or years from now, he will come across the notebook where he had hastily scrawled those lame lyrics, and he will think, "Oh my God, I can't believe I performed this at Jazz Fest."

Perhaps not. Maybe he will always think it was a great song. Maybe it really is the best lyrics he can write. But most of us hearing him perform that day gave up on his performance because of that song (and, I suspect, because of the negativity and tension in the room when he started complaining to the sound guy). After all, there were several other bands playing on other stages at the same time, not to mention food to eat, art to admire, and everything else Jazz Fest offers.

Failure is a painful but important step in the learning process. I certainly can't say that all (maybe not even any) of the art I've produced is the absolute best that I'm capable of. But it's important to remember that your audience has options, and if you don't really strive to do your best, they are likely to give up and seek out someone else's efforts. You don't automatically get an "A" for effort. Practice, refine, and for God's sake, REVISE!

Relocated.

I went to Lewisville, TX this past weekend to participate in the American Association of Community Theatre's regional festival. I've been a part of an original piece called A-musing with Ashe Cultural Arts Center. We won at the Louisiana festival in February, so we advanced to the regionals. We didn't win in Texas, though - which I have mixed feelings about. The national festival is in New York in late June, when I'll be 8 months pregnant, so they would have had to replace me anyway. But it would have been nice for the rest of the team (who all worked harder and longer on this project than I did) to advance.

While packing to return home, it hit me that, for the first time in eight years, the home I was returning to was not New Orleans. I moved in with my partner (my baby's dad) at the end of March, and we live in Denham Springs.

I remember a few years ago, my sister and I (we lived together at the time) were thinking of moving to a new apartment, and we looked at some places on Algiers Point. We were unsure whether it would feel "too far" from downtown New Orleans. Ha! Now I'm a 90 minute drive away (if traffic cooperates).

I live in a subdivision with cookie-cutter new brick houses and no trees. There are no stores within walking distance. I've been forced to shop more than once at Walmart (which, among its other obvious issues, does not exactly have a great selection of vegan foods). Sometimes this still feels like a weird dream.

On the other hand, I now live in a 3 bedroom house with a big yard, 2 cats, and the guy I love. I've planted a vegetable garden. We've got a big compost bin, which for some reason I find ridiculously thrilling. Our son's room is gradually filling up with artwork, toys, and clothes that other parents have given me.

I'm still commuting to NOLA for work two days a week, and I've also visited often to see plays and attend French Quarter Fest. We recently checked out the Swine Palace Theater on LSU's campus, closer to home, for their production of The Metal Children, which I enjoyed.

The pace of my life has dramatically slowed over the past few months. I'm simply not able to work as much, to do as much theater, to exercise as much, etc. It was a big shift - much like the move itself. But I've found myself enjoying being able to really focus on one thing at a time. I do prenatal yoga DVDs. I cook dinner (I was doing that before, but it's nice to have someone to share it with). I finished revising the novel I've been working on for two years (finally!) and am ready to take that project to the next stage. When I was in Lewisville, I was able to direct all my energy to our performance and the necessary preparations. When I drove into NOLA for Playback rehearsal on Sunday, I felt fully "there," with no future responsibilities tugging at my brain.

I know this period will be brief. Believe me, every parent I know has informed me multiple times that this stuff will not be possible, at least for a while, after our baby is born. But it's where I'm at right now, and I'm enjoying the moments as they come, these days.

An actor tries to write

When I started working on my novel, I noticed that writing dialogue came naturally to me. Since the only writing I'd done for years was for theater, this made sense. But I soon noticed, flipping through my first draft, that the manuscript was mostly dialogue. It didn't look like a novel. It looked like...a script. Oops.

My sister said, "you're expecting the set people and the costume people and the lighting people to take care of everything else. But there are no set people and costume people and lighting people."

So I worked on adding description to break up the dialogue. Anyone who's ever taken an acting class is familiar with the concept of motivation. You read the lines, and figure out what the character wants from the person they're speaking to.

My novel is told in the first person, so I ended up with several variations of "I wanted him to..."

Not good. I needed action. This is where my theater background actually started to help me instead of hindering. I acted it out.

I would mentally put myself in the situation, say the lines of lovely dialogue I'd already written, and observe myself. Sometimes literally, in front of a mirror. But more often, I just noted what my physical impulses were, then wrote them down. I should note that it was at this point that I gave up on the idea of writing in coffee shops.

My training in Playback theater was especially helpful for this process. Playback is improv, but not the comedic type. We listen to stories and experiences offered by audience members, then we act them out on the spot. I've found that Playback helps me get into the heads of others by connecting to universal emotions instead of focusing on differences. I often have to play someone who is not my age, gender, race, etc. It's the kind of role I would never be cast in for traditional theater, but it happens all the time in Playback.

One time, I remember I was acting out a scene and I actually made myself physically ill. I got so upset that I felt nauseous. I had to stop and remind myself that not only was it "just a story," it was a story I freakin' made up!

What can I say? Actors are intense.

The drive to create

Last spring, I decided to write a novel. There was an idea I'd tried unsuccessfully to write as a play for years, and one day, while I was doing a massage, I began to think of the story as a novel instead of a play. Suddenly I had so many ideas that it was almost overwhelming. I couldn't wait to rush home and start writing. I had the next day off, so I ended up writing all night, and all the next day. That was at the beginning of April. By early July, I'd finished the first draft of my novel.

Looking back, I think there were a combination of things that put me in the mindset to pour all of my energy, my free time, my self into this project. First, I'd just been dumped. It wasn't a very serious or long-term relationship, but something about it hit me really hard. I was so depressed that I could hardly function. I desperately needed something to think about, something to have feelings about, other than the breakup. Once I started writing, I got over the pain of the breakup almost instantly. It was almost freaky.

A second factor was fear. I was afraid that if I stopped writing, I'd abandon the project. I've abandoned lots of projects in the past, but for some reason I knew it would be unthinkable to abandon this project. So I resolved to work on the novel every day. Even if I was suffering from total writer's block, I forced myself to open up the Word file and at least re-read what I'd written so far. That was usually enough to get me going again. One day, I remember I felt so blocked that all I did was type two new words, then I closed the file and went to bed. The next day I deleted those two words and wrote three thousand more.

I'd always thought of myself as a "theater person." All the writing I'd done since college was for theater. It was very strange for me to spend so much time in my own head, interacting only with my laptop. Everything about the process felt unnatural to me. But every single other thing in my life - my job, even basics like eating and sleeping - felt like an annoying distraction. I just needed to finish the novel. Somehow.

I'd had shorter periods of that kind of feverish compulsion in my life, but nothing like the months I spent writing the first draft of my novel. It's probably for the best that I'm not like that all the time - even if I didn't burn out, I'd become so detached from the world that I'd be left with nothing to reflect upon.

Still, I loved that crazy feeling. It reminds me of the characters in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, who become obsessed with Devil's Tower, though they don't know why. "This is important...this means something."

This is when you know you're an artist. People might think you're crazy. That's okay...you are crazy. If you can't get a little unbalanced when you're lost in the drive to create, you may have to ask yourself, is it important? Does it mean something?