Early Morning

The sun

Still sleeping

But I am awake

Not tense

My mind dreading

The tasks

Which wait for me

No

Today is an adventure

In organization

To turn boxes of old

Bags of donations

Loads of trash

Into gleaming rooms

To make a house a home

Not Dead

It's only been 20 days, but it feels like forever since I've had Internet access!

In case you'd assumed my death, you were wrong. I am alive and painting pretty much every room in my new house, now that we've moved in. I'll share more once I clean the paint out of my hair a bit. I might even give you a few pictures!

Hope all of you are doing well. I'll be checking all of your blogs a.s.a.p., I promise!

Madness

I'd say something profound

(Or at least attempt it)

But the searing itch of

Eleven mosquito bites

On two ankles

Is too distracting

Today

Not About You

Believe it or not

It might seem like the sun rose

Just so you could wake up

This morning

And get married

Or go on vacation

Or complain about the heat

But it rose to feed the trees

To feed the algae

To feed the countless lives

Stage by stage on the chain of life

And your waking was only one

Microscopic speck

Of the overall plan.

You might think traffic moves

Just so you can get to work

Or that old woman with coupons

Is in line just to irritate you

Or nothing's on TV

So that you can get the laundry done

Or cookies call to you

Or people wait to serve you.

Get over it

Get over yourself

You want it to be about you?

Do something with your life

To feed the world

To help people find work

Pay for groceries

Have clothing of their own

Eat.

Forget about being served.

Serve.

Not So Fast

Not a quick step

Confident

Resounding on the hardwood floor

To let them

To let myself

Hear the movement forward

Not a rocket

Shooting off

Inspired

On fire

Turning out the pages

Faster than I can count

Not the NASCAR racer

Tearing up the track

Passing all

As if they were

Standing still

Watching in awe

As I pass

No

Much as I would like it

My toes are only inching forward

Wheels turning slowly

A snail

Leaving a perfect trail

Of neatly ordered

Slowly formed

Through intense pressure

Stones

Perhaps someday

It'll be a diamond

The Drawing Board

This photo, taken by Alec Hendrix in 2007, shows Coffeyville, KS after a terrifying flood. Some died, and many lost their homes to the flooding.

It is also the inspiration for my second novel, which I am now, after a year of working on other projects, revising. Writing the novel accomplished a few things. It started me thinking about a lot of religious and spiritual elements in my life. It got me to the top 100 entries in the Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel Contest. It even helped me work on some family issues.

Looking back over it, I'm grateful that it got me this far, but I also see that it isn't going to get me any farther. In fact, it's pretty much crap.

And I don't mean that in a nice, pseudo-humble sort of way. It sucks. It's overall plot is more than far-fetched, its detail and characters lacking, its ending far from meaningful. Besides a few kernels of brightness shining, like sunlight on water at sunset, it's pretty much muddy ooze.

Fortunately, I had one reader who told me so. And I also had the wisdom to let the thing sit longer than overnight--I waited a YEAR to come back to it--so that I could come back with renewed perspective and shred and reshape the novel into what it is supposed to be.

I'm off to work on my piece of crap. Perhaps, if I can replace the rotting wood and moldy drywall, I can get the structure of it back into shape. I pretty much have a blank slate, so I'll move walls, tear down a few useless rooms, add a bathroom, finish the attic properly, and put a playset in the backyard. I'll wait on the painting, shutters, and landscaping until the last, when the plan is exactly what it needs to be.

Here's hoping you have the guts to shred your own masterpieces... to carve them into their true form...

Cheers! (Now get to work!)

The Art of the Narrative

I've finished up the ending of my Thomas novel (finally), and while it isn't very good yet, I know it will get there.

Nothing is as awful as a bad ending. The ending is one of those elements crucial to a good book, for if it tells too much or wraps up too little, doesn't make sense, or takes everything off on some weird tangent, readers will be disappointed. Jung claimed that we read so that we can "practice" our own endings, so endings are especially meaningful to us as readers.

I was reminded of this as I put my kids to bed last night. Since our books are still packed, and will likely be packed for a few more weeks (ugh!), we told stories to each other. I started things out, putting together a goofy story about a purple, hair giraffe who ended up living in northern Canada. Then my son told a story in three sentences. His typical method of creating plot is establishing that something is stupid:

Once upon a time there was a red crab.

He was very stupid.

The end.

Dreadful. Naturally, I didn't tell him it was dreadful, but I my mind, buzzing about my own ending (to be written once the kids went to bed), took note of the fact that an ending which comes too quickly (and says too little) won't be satisfactory.

My daughter, not to be outdone, told a story which started out very well... a leopard who ate all his friends and had to learn non-violence if he was to not be alone in the world... but she continued the story long after the climax had occurred, carrying through for nearly ten minutes to express how he met a girl leopard, they had eight cubs, and the reformed leopard taught them how to hunt and kill (no joke). By the end even my eyes were rolling.

Again, my writing brain jotted down the reality that an ending, if too drawn out and too filled with nonessentials, could really bore the snot out of readers.

Perhaps a balance should be struck. What do you think should be in an ending? What endings do you tend to love or hate? Why?