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The Importance of Shades of Gray

I love this week’s theme on Wordsmith.org: eponyms.

Today’s word, as quoted from Wordsmith’s site:

manichean. adjective: Of or relating to a dualistic view of the world, dividing things into either good or evil, light or dark, black or white, involving no shades of gray.

ETYMOLOGY:
After Manes/Mani (216-276 CE), Persian founder of Manichaeism, an ancient religion espousing a doctrine of a struggle between good and evil.

***

I heard it or read it somewhere: writing is a solitary act, but it cannot be done in isolation. If you’re not a writer (and of manichean tendencies), you might think that sentence contradicts itself. Writing is, or it isn’t, a solitary act.

But, I find, in writing, there are no black and white, right or wrong answers most of the time.

Two writer’s whose blogs I frequent, Linda Cassidy and Cathryn Grant, both posted this week on the subject of genre descriptions and the struggle to find the right category for your novel. Linda posted a link to AgentQuery’s genre descriptions, and, though my novel is several rewrites away from being agent-ready, I could relate to the struggle of choosing a genre. AgentQuery starts out by comparing the job of classifying a novel to the question, “Where are you from?”

I’m from Wisconsin. Well, really I was born and raised in Texas. So, I’m from Texas. Right? I’ve lived in Wisconsin long enough, but my heart is still….

You get the point. It’s a tough question that only I know the answer to, and the answer isn’t one or the other. In the world of genre categories, nothing is clear-cut either. Genre descriptions overlap and interweave and can drive an author mad.

My struggles with my work-in-progress henge on my resistance to rewrites. I’ve been sitting on the premise that a rewrite must go from beginning to end and back again. After several encouraging comments from other writers on a recent post of mine, I thought, okay, I’ll break it down, piece by piece, and address those parts that don’t work. But until I read Linda’s and Cathryn’s posts, I stared blankly at the story and wondered, which parts don’t work?

What does all this have to do with queries and categories, you ask? Let go of the linear, and hear me out.

Linda’s and Cathryn’s posts, and AgentQuery’s descriptions, gave me pause and shed a new light my novel. I asked myself, in what genre would my story fit? I came up with an answer of what I don’t want, and then my mind flashed through several scenes in need of fixing, or deleting. That may be a minute part of the writing process for some authors, but, for me, the experience was like a jump-start.

In the last several months, I’ve connected with a number of great writers online, my own mini virtual salon. In this online community of writers, our experiences overlap. One writer’s struggle highlights my own, but in a different way. Even if I read others’ posts that describe steps and struggles in the publishing process that are well beyond my reach, I learn. When they comment on my posts, I grow in the same way as a writer who might be sitting in a cafe, sipping coffee with my colleagues, reading our work face to face. As a mother of two young children with little time to write – much less, time to get out for coffee, alone – I cherish these relations and their dialogue.

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flash fiction: Losing My Focus

It’s Wednesday. Are you ready for the word? I’m not., but I’m committed to giving it a whirl.

From Wordsmith.org, Today’s Word:
peremptory. adj. dictatorial. expressing command or urgency. not admitting any question or contradiction.

I admit, I went to a thesaurus in search of connections: dictatorial – bossy – overbearing – high and mighty.

***

I walked into the house carrying a bushel of fresh picked apples. A waft of Yankee Harvest candle overcame me, which was then overpowered by a stream of staccato jazz violin — Stephane Grappelli, her favorite. I don’t know any other violinists, but I know Grappelli well. He’s her “pick me up” music she plays when cleaning house or scrubbing dishes or ignoring her lingering doom.

She meandered down the hall, like a skeleton in jeans. The apples were heavy, and her appearance shocked me. I dropped the bushel onto the floor harder than I intended.

“Careful, Maggie! If they’re too heavy, ask for help.” Even in a state of decline, her peremptory voice commanded subservience.

“Sorry, Mom. It slipped.” I slipped. She hated it when I reacted too strongly to her thinning hair and gaunt face. When I visited, I forced myself to look her straight in the eyes, zero in on her amber irises, watch her pupils shrink and grow with the changing light through the window. Only when she turned towards the kitchen, and I followed, was I allowed to study the sharpness of her shoulder blades. My heart fell.

“I picked two bushels of Macs and Paula Reds, mixed. Those are good, right? How many apple crisps are we making today?”

“Paula’s are good, Macs will do. I need ten crisps. One for the Johnson widows down the street, three for the church bazaar, five for St. Vincent DePaul – soup kitchen’s open tomorrow. And, one for you, my sweet.” She looked over her glasses at me, straight into my anguished face. “Get that expression off your face, Maggie. Only smiles in this house today.”

I swallowed hard. “Yes, Mother. I’ll go get the other bushel.”

She hollered from the kitchen as I stepped through the front door, “And, don’t drop them this time, missy!”

Behind the open trunk of the car, I broke down. When she told me of the cancer six months ago, she declared it a minor disruption. She demanded I see it the same way. She refused to listen to my fears. This apple crisp bake-off is a tradition. I knew it was coming. But, I hadn’t prepared for the wrench on my heart.

I gave myself exactly one minute to fall apart, then I wiped my face with my sleeve, put on some lip gloss, and straightened my hair. I picked up the bushel and balanced it between the bumper and my legs. Then, I slammed the trunk.

She was standing in the front doorway.

“What’s taking you so long? We’re on a schedule here, and you know how long it takes to peel those apples.”

Her sharp tongue whipped me into a staunch laugh. “God, Mom. I’m coming! These apples are heavy.”

“So is your hand when you peel them.” She eyed me up as she held open the door and I slid past. “Let’s try not to take out half the flesh when you peel the skin away this year. Got it?”

She slapped me on the bottom and sent me marching into the kitchen.

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Iron Bodies

Wordsmith.org’s theme this week is “terms from law.”

Today’s Wednesday, here’s the word:
barratry. noun: the practice of stirring up groundless lawsuits.

If you’re new to my Wednesday’s word of the day routine, know that the word is looked on as inspiration. You can use it in a story, or you can use it as a catalyst for a story. For me – today – barratry takes me back to another flash fiction post about welding and bodies and missed perceptions.

Here’s where we left off last time:

He wore his welder’s helmet. Sparks flew up and out around him. He must not have heard her walk in, but he surely felt her pointed tap on his shoulder. He jumped, dropped his torch, and swung his elbow around. In an instant, her eyebrow burned and she fell back, heard a loud clang, and blacked out.

When she opened her eyes, she looked up into flourescent lights. She blinked once, twice, and then saw him again. Only this time he wasn’t peering out from behind a green welding glass.

“You’re awake. Thank god. You scared me woman. You fell back into a pile of scrap and sliced open your head. I thought I’d killed you.” With that, he put his hand on her arm and squeezed.

Her heart popped and beat fast, and her head swirled. The heat of his hand confused her.

“Those people,” she whispered, “on the front lawn….”

He smiled. She squinted. Then, the nurse pushed open the door.

***

He left the room to give her some privacy. When he tried to go back in, the nurse side-stepped in front of him. Her words were irrelevant; it was her expression that warned him not to return. He left a note at the nurse’s desk and went back home to his welding. She stayed overnight to recover.

A few days later, she sat in her recliner watching TV. During a commercial break, she got up to pour herself another cup of tea. She walked past the TV screen and stopped short.

[Are you the victim of a personal injury? Insurance company not returning your call?]

When victim and personal hit her ears, her mind returned to the scene of the crime. She marched to the window and snapped back the curtains. He had moved the figures, sure, but she still saw evidence of their former positions in the depressed grass. She grabbed her spring jacket off the coat rack. In her frenzy to wrench it closed – tight – with the waist belt, she ignored the in-turned collar. She flung open the front door and made her way across her manicured lawn, through his overgrown yard, and straight to the garage. She heard clicking and then the sound of his torch.

This time when she pushed the door open, she held it back against the wall. She kept one hand on the door knob and one on the door itself for balance. Then, she weaved her foot around a chunk of metal and careened it her way to use as a door stop. He turned from his work and peered through his welding glass.

She waited.

He waited.

She sighed, rolled her eyes, and moved towards him. She stopped twice to make sure he put his torch down before she got too close. He raised his welding glass.

“What can I do for you?”

She couldn’t decipher the tone of his voice. “I got home from the hospital three days ago.”

“Yes.”

“You haven’t bothered to call to see if I’m okay. You haven’t said a thing about paying my bill.”

“I left a note with a nurse. Have you gotten a bill?”

“Well, no, not yet. But when I do….”

“Fine.”

Again, the tone puzzled her. “You left a note? I never got a note.”

He waited.

She waited.

He turned back to his work and pulled down his glass.

She leaned over and tapped him on the shoulder. His response was muffled by the glass, which he didn’t raise this time. He held his hands frozen in position, and she saw his shoulders rise and fall as he took a deep breath.

“I’m calling a lawyer,” she quipped.

He set down his tools. He raised his welding glass. He was smiling.

“Did you hear me?” She moved one foot back. “I said I”m calling a lawyer.”

“Yes.” His smile didn’t budge.

Her feet shuffled back and forth, and her shirt felt wet under her arms. She looked around at the other iron bodies, but their menacing looks had changed, probably from the extra light through the doorway she thought.

“You might want to cut that grass in front. It’s a hazard if we hit dry conditions.” She wanted to add insult. “Not to mention it looks like a jungle.”

“Thanks for the tip. And, you might want to fix your coat collar.” That was all he said. Not one word more.

She watched him as he turned back to his metal and lit his torch. She turned to storm out, but stopped at the door to fix her collar. Then, she reached down pushed the chunk of metal out of the way. The door closed slowly behind her.

She stood there for several minutes and listened to him work. When her eyes came back into focus, she saw speckles of color all over the back yard: purple and yellow and a soft orange. More weeds, she thought. Then, upon closer inspection, she noticed a stone path winding through the flowers.

Disgusted, she did an about face and marched back towards her house. But this time, she took the sidewalk.