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.

The curse of questioning.

My mother makes decisions very easily.  She does a little research, finds something that makes sense to her, and goes with it.  When it comes to training her dog, she follows that Dog Whisperer guy.  When she wants to make a major purchase, she consults Consumer Reports.  When we were babies, she looked everything up in her Dr. Spock book. 

I wish I could do that.  I don't know if it's personality differences, or a result of coming of age with internet access, or some combination of the two, but I find it very hard to find One Solution to any given problem.  Because, there are so many "experts" out there!  And they disagree with each other!  And you can find them all (and their various legions of followers) stating their cases on the internet!  And I can't seem to stop myself, whenever I hear advice, from looking it up online, and seeking out alternative opinions.  Sometimes I spend hours doing this.

In recent years, I have developed a decent ability to see and understand both sides of an issue.  This is mostly a good thing, but it can make it hard for me to make a moral decision and feel certain that it's the right choice.  Exploration of moral gray areas is a major theme in my writing.  It makes for great drama.  It's not always so great in real life, though.

Two areas that I spend a lot of time researching are, not surprisingly, parenting and nutrition.  I've grown really tired of articles along the lines of "Ten Foods You Think Are Healthy That Are Actually Unhealthy" and "Five Ways You Are Damaging Your Baby" etc.  People love to write these things, I guess because it's fun to tell other people they're WRONG.  Then, I suppose, they get a lot of hits on these articles because everyone wants to share them on Facebook so that they can get the pleasure of telling their friends and family that they're WRONG.  One thing these type of articles tend to say is some version of "do the research yourself, and you'll see that I'm right!"  This amuses me, because I usually find that the more research I do, the more nuanced and muddy an issue gets.

Of course, ultimately, one has to make a decision and stick with it.  I choose to be vegan even though I don't believe it's necessarily the One Best Way To Be Healthy And Moral.  I believe, based on my research and personal experience that it can be healthy, that it can help the environment, and that I would prefer not to eat or harm animals, if I can avoid it. 

Parenting is a bit stickier for me.  I have some friends who are strong adherents to Attachment Parenting, and some of it makes sense and works well for me, too (like breastfeeding and cloth diapering).  Other things, like co-sleeping, do not currently work for me.  Sometimes it feels easy, in the moment, to fall asleep while nursing Anton in bed.  Problem is, we both tend to wake up more often, and I tend to get squished into uncomfortable positions, resulting in back and neck aches, and if he wakes up and I don't immediately realize it, he can and will crawl off the edge of the bed.  Sometimes he will sleep in his own bed without much fuss.  Sometimes he won't. 

One major issue is, I like my own space in bed.  I don't snuggle with David when I'm sleeping.  When I lived alone, my cat would sleep on top of me, and I didn't mind that, but generally I don't want other humans touching me when I'm trying to sleep. 

Anton slept really long stretches in the first few months of his life, but now?  Not so much.  I know this is normal.  I know he's not some evil baby, trying to manipulate me.*  But more sleep needs to happen, somehow.  Last night, David was remarking about how I've changed my mind a few times about what I would and wouldn't try to get him to sleep more.  I readily admitted that I am stumped on this issue.  I've tried various methods, and haven't found one that works.  It has become quite apparent to me that no One True Way of parenting is going to work for me.  I wish it could be that easy...but it's not. 

I guess it's time for more research.

*I have to say, I find it slightly questionable that people feel so certain that they know exactly what a baby or a dog's thought process is in a given situation.  I mean, how can they be so sure whether or not the dog wants a human to be its "pack leader" or a baby, if left in a crib, will believe his parents don't care and have abandoned him to die alone?  Don't babies and dogs have some diversity in how they react to situations?  And how can we really be sure, given that none of us has been a dog or remembers being a young baby?  There I go, questioning again...

If it's not one thing...

So, since Anton started day care, he's picked up just about every germ in the world.  Sometimes David and I end up getting sick, too.  It's getting quite old.  Anyway, it's been a few weeks since I've been actively sick, but I developed a sinus infection after my last cold.  This has happened to me a couple of times in the past, and I would treat it with steam/neti pot/huge doses of Vitamin C until it went away.  Which usually took...a LONG time!

Well, this time it got so ridiculous that I had horrible headaches and even visual effects (no, it wasn't a migraine, it was just my sinuses).  So I broke down and got some antibiotics.  And then it went away!  Yay!

But...then the antibiotics (amoxicillin) gave me a scary rash that sent me back to the doctor!  Not cool!  Apparently this is fairly common for kids, but can also happen to adults.  The rash is made worse by sun exposure, so it's all over my chest, neck, and face.  It's fading now and looks mostly like a splotchy sunburn.  Gah.

The doctor told me to limit sun exposure.  NO JAZZ FEST, he said!  Oddly, that actually makes me feel somewhat better.  I hadn't planned to go to Jazz Fest anyway, because, sadly, Anton is in a phase that I don't think would be very Fest-compatible.  He mostly likes to crawl, stand, and cruise around.  Sitting in a stroller all day?  Not so much.  But I was feeling sorry for myself for not being able to go, so it helps to have an actual medical reason as well.

Anyway, at least I have a cute kid to hang out with.

The Art of Fielding

After reading a couple of disappointing books, I decided I needed to read something Highly Acclaimed.  Highly Acclaimed books aren't necessarily a sure bet with me, as I can be a bit of a contrarian at times.  But it worked out well in the case of Atonement, which I'd been meaning to read for a while and enjoyed quite a bit, and The Art of Fielding, which Jim recommended for me on the DGLM blog.

One of the selling points I hear most often for The Art of Fielding is that you don't have to be a baseball fan to enjoy it.  I suppose there may not be a huge overlap between Baseball Fans and Literary Fiction Fans.  I, however, do enjoy baseball.  While I'm not a diehard fan, if I had to pick a favorite sport, baseball would be it.  So the baseball theme was a plus, for me.  And although I'm sure every reviewer out there is tempted to compare the book itself to a baseball game...I'll go ahead and jump on that bandwagon.  The Art of Fielding drags out through extra innings (it's apparently over 500 pages long, though I read it on the Kindle where a book's length is not as apparent) with short, episodic chapters, some of which don't feel entirely necessary as not much happens.  But you care about the team, and by the end of the game you're rewarded for staying on the bleachers through it all.

This scathing (and very spoilery!) review over at the Atlantic faults the book for being shallow, but I disagree.  There were some tedious bits, but I found the characters to be interesting, whole, and easy to relate to.  And yes, the fictional Westish College feels a bit...quaint.  The jocks are well-read, sensitive souls, seemingly free of prejudice.  Don't we wish!

Overall, I rooted for the Westish Harpooners through their triumphs and failures, and enjoyed some nail-biting bottom-of-the-ninth moments as well. This team has a lot of heart.

An uphill battle

8 months after giving birth, I'm now within about 5lbs of my pre-pregnancy weight. Losing the weight (50lbs!) felt rather slow at times, especially because I was hoping breastfeeding would make the pounds "just fall off" as so many women attest...but that didn't really happen for me. I lost a good bit of it in the past two months, which I think is due to working more, which involves more physical activity.

Anyway, I'm now satisfied with the number on the scale, but not so much with what I see in the mirror. Back before I got pregnant, I had a fair amount of muscle from work and exercise, and people often guessed I weighed about 15lbs less than I actually did, probably due to that "muscle weighs more than fat" thing. Well, now I'd like some of that muscle back!

I try not to get too caught up in body image stuff, because I don't want to be vain or shallow. But there are just so many things I prefer about having a lean, strong body. One major thing I've noticed is how different everything feels when you have weak abdominal muscles. I feel that my posture suffers and my lower back hurts more. I'd also prefer not to have my thighs touch each other.

I'd like to get back into Spinning, but I must admit I'm afraid of no longer being good at it. For years, I felt like a Spinning class star. I know, it's rather silly. But I don't want to go back to the red-faced, winded person I was at my first Spinning class seven years ago!

So I've begun doing more cardio workouts on the elliptical machine, with the goal of working myself back into some semblance of shape before I attempt a Spinning class. I'm also enjoying yoga and, of course, walking outside in this all-too-brief spring weather.

At the moment, however, I'm eagerly anticipating Anton's next nap, and I plan to join him.

On SAHMs, Ann Romney, and all this silliness

There's some good discussion going on over at Feministe about what's really going on when politicians talk about motherhood being "the most important job there is." If you're a wealthy woman, at least.

As I've mentioned here before, I thought I might take a year off from work after Anton was born, but I took a wait-and-see approach, and didn't make a definite decision because I didn't know how I'd feel in this very new situation. And I was very lucky to be in a financial position to have options. And, as it turned out, I got rather bored with the whole SAHM thing and started to ease back into work when Anton was 3 months old, by commuting to NOLA every couple of weeks to see old clients. I continue to do that, and have now added another part-time massage job closer to home.

The thing is, I love spending time with my baby. But not every second. Some of it is lots of fun. Some of it is quite tedious. And although, overall, I put a lot of work and thought into The Job of Motherhood, it's not as if I'm the only person on this planet who possesses the necessary skills to change his diapers or feed him applesauce, tiny spoonful by tiny spoonful. Sometimes it's great to get a break from all that for a few hours, and use some of the skills I've spent years refining, like my massage skills, or my writing skills.

It is patronizing when Important Men talk about the hard work involved in staying home with the kids (unless you're a poor woman, in which case...get your lazy ass off the couch and work, right?), not because it isn't hard work, but because it is also tedious work, which they are unwilling to do.

It reminds me of when I had an admin job, and one of my tasks was to take a pile of rumpled receipts and create an expense report for one of the executives. It was a frustrating task, because he never sorted anything out, so it was hard for me to tell if a particular restaurant receipt was from taking clients out for a dinner meeting, or taking his family out for dinner (and if it was the latter, I didn't really want to help him get reimbursed for it, when I was surviving on boxed mac and cheese). When I expressed my frustration, which I often did, as subservience has never come naturally to me, he would try to placate me by telling me just how good I was at making these expense reports. Because he was just so naturally disorganized, you see. He needed someone like me to sort things out for him.

Thing is, if he'd seen the state of my apartment at the time, he would have seen that I was naturally disorganized as well. I only forced myself to be organized at work because, well, it was my job, and I needed to pay rent and buy a bus pass and that aforementioned boxed mac and cheese (I wasn't vegan yet at that time, obviously).

Child care, like most jobs, is a mix of fun stuff and important stuff and hard stuff and tedious stuff. But when ambitious men claim it's the Most Important Job In The World, they're just blowing smoke up our asses. I'll believe it when they quit their less important jobs to be Stay At Home Dads.

Vegan French Quarter Fest

My mom is obsessed with French Quarter Fest (and all the other festivals that take place every 5 minutes in NOLA). Her sister, my dear Aunt Judy, is in town visiting, and they asked me if I wanted to meet them for breakfast. The catch? It had to be within walking distance of my mom's parking spot in the Quarter. There are growing options for vegan breakfast/brunch in NOLA, but I wasn't aware of any actually within the Quarter. I love 13 on Frenchmen, but Anton was with me, and it's a bar, so...no. After some Googling, I told them to meet me at Meals From The Heart in the French Market. I'd had food from Meals From The Heart a few years back, when they used to sell food at...some festival...the Creole Tomato Thing, perhaps? Anyway, it's good, healthy food, and they offer both vegan and gluten free options.

I was thrilled to be able to order vegan pancakes! They put bananas in the batter and blueberries and strawberries on top. They tasted like classic diner-style pancakes, which I haven't had in forever (I make my own at home but they are more crepe-like). I shared with Anton and we both enjoyed them. My mom got eggs and grits and my Aunt got a lovely salad. The ladies working there were super-nice, too. Fellow NOLA vegans or visitors should definitely check this place out...I hear their black bean burgers are delicious, too.

At the Festival itself, there are a couple of food options. A place in by the Mint has veg red beans. Last year there was a Jamaican place there with some great vegan stuff, but I couldn't find them this year :( Mona's has a booth in Woldenburg Park, and that's always a good bet, too.

I'm going back tomorrow (must see Debauche!) so I'll see what else I find.