Writing Advice in Unexpected Places

I wrote a few posts about finding good lines in unexpected places--meaning B movies. 

This post is about finding relevant writing advice in unexpected places. A few weeks ago, I was reading through a list of tips/advice about random topics--I think it was from cracked.com, but I can't find it.

Here's the gist of what I remember:

Don't completely stop a good routine. If you've been working out and want to skip a day, do two sit-ups. If  you write everyday and want to skip a day, write two sentences. 

I thought this was a great idea. Unfortunately, I haven't acted on it yet.

The following is a comment more than a piece of advice from the series, Wednesday:

"I've always hated the expression 'write what you know'. It's a hall pass for the imagination-impaired." 

I have to agree with Wednesday on this. "Write what you know." may be good advice for a new writer, but it's too restricting. Taken literally, I can't write about a man, a mother, a divorcee, an actress, or anyone older than me. Let me use my imagination. 

Things I Said

Jace and I were walking down Prospect Avenue yesterday. In an attempt to keep him from barking at two dogs walking on the other side of the street, I said, "These aren't the droids you're looking for." 

It didn't work.

Tuesday Miscellanea

I was scrolling through TV channels before I started to cook dinner and found "Sideshow Bob Roberts" on The Simpsons--one of my favorite episides. Sideshow Bob is released from prison and runs for Mayor of Springfield. A campaign ad: Mayor Quimby supports revolving-door prisons. Mayor Quimby even released Sideshow Bob--a man twice convicted of attempted murder. Can you trust a man like Mayor Quimby? Vote Sideshow Bob for Mayor. 

Bob wins. Lisa and Bart can't understand how so many people can vote for one convicted felon and so few vote for another. How did Bob do it? By counting votes of dead people. Bart's conclusion: "Oh my God--the dead have risen and they're voting Republican." I laughed out loud. 

Later we watched "Homer Badman" another favorite from Season Six. Homer is accused of sexual harassment when he is reaching for the Gummy Venus de Milo he stole from the candy convention (which had stuck to the babysitter's butt.) A highlight of the 57 hours of  round the clock coverage outside the Simpson estate is when Marge puts out the cat--possibly because it was harassed--we don't know. Homer also sings "Under the Sea" where "there'll be no accusations, just friendly crustaceans." 

Good times.

The Mets are playing the second part of the subway series in Yankee Stadium. At the top of the 9th, the Mets are up 9-3. It had been 7-0 with lots of Mets homeruns, but the Mets manage to let the Yankees get back in the game. They need to hold on.  

More from Writing Women's Lives: Part Two

More passages.

Nikki Giovanni: 

        It's lonely. Writing. But so is practicing tennis or football runs. So is studying. So is waxing the floor and changing the baby. So is life. We are less lonely when we connect. Art is a connection. I like being a link. I hope the chain will hold. 

Dorothy Allison:

        One time, twice, once in a while again, I get it right. Once in a while, I can make the world I know real on a page. 

bell hooks:

        As I wrote, I felt that I was not as concerned with accuracy of detail as I was with evoking in writing the state of mind, the spirit of a particular moment.

Natalie Kusz:

        A song began with one voice--Mom's or Dad's opening out for two notes. By the third, the rest of us had it and added our parts, Mom switching to alto and taking me sometimes with her, the children's voices and the adults' mixing and widening out, a cappella. My father's head dipped side to side, like a swimmer leaning into his strokes, bellowing out tenor and baritone from the deep, ringing taverns of himself. Mom lifted up her face, taking in air, moving back into the melody, and from her we children learned our own sopranos, the true and unmuffled phrasings, the tones directed by breath and sustained until our very bones and their hollows resonated and increased with the joy of them.

More From Writing Women's Lives

As I wrote previously, I found many wonderful passages in this book. 

Mary Antin: 

Silence upon silence is added to the night; only the kitchen clock is the voice of my brooding thoughts,--ticking, ticking, ticking.

I'd like to read more of her work.

Madeleine L'Engle:

If we are not willing to risk to fail, we will never accomplish anything. All creative acts involve the risk of failure. Marriage is a terrible risk. So is having children. So is giving a performance in the theater, or the writing of a book. Whenever something is completed successfully, then we must move on, and that is again to risk failure. 

Lucille Clifton:

Things don't fall apart. Things hold. Lines connect in thin ways that last and last and lives become generations made out of pictures and words just kept. 

Diane Glancy: 

Do you have something bothering you? Get into it. That will save the problem of writing boring poems...

    

I think it's also important to know why you write. When I go into a bookstore & see shelves full of books, I think why do I do this? Hasn't it been done better than I can do it? That's when I have to be able to look at myself & decide, I have something to say too--These other books can move over & make room for mine. 

Noir Classic Re-Watch: The Narrow Margin

The Narrow Margin is a classic noir B movie starring Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor. Detective Brown (McGraw) is a hard-bitten police detective assigned to escort Mrs. Neall (Windsor) a mobster's widow from Chicago to LA to testify before a grand jury against her husband's accomplices.

Most of the action takes place on a train--the perfect claustrophobic setting for a noir with its small compartments and narrow corridors. Brown and Neall are menaced by men with guns, a man with a bribe, and maybe others.

The dialogue crackles. In an early scene, Brown's partner wonders what the widow looks like. Brown's response: "A dish...Sixty-cent special. Cheap, flashy, strictly poison under the gravy."

Brown's partner is killed before they even get Mrs. Neall out of her apartment. On the train, Brown's drink and conversation with a woman makes her a potential target. Mrs. Neall wants to take advantage of the situation.

Brown: "You make me sick to my stomach."
Mrs. Neal: "Well, use your own sink. And let me know when the target practice starts. "

Later Mrs. Neall suggests they sell out. "Oh, wake up Brown. This train's headed straight for the cemetery. But there's another on coming along, a gravy train. Let's get on it."

I love how compact the story is with a running length of 71 minutes--a complement to the claustrophobic train setting.  McGraw and Windsor make a great team.

I do have a problem with the ending of the movie. It's a bit too sweet and cutesy and does a disservice to a major character.

I still love this film.

I Like Griping

I was reminded of this quote from Alien this morning:

Lambert: I can't see a goddamn thing.
Kane: Quit griping.
Lambert: I like griping.

Our condo super called me and seemingly forgot that last week he implied that Jeff and I would be responsible for an expensive plumbing repair. It was really annoying--don't gaslight me and don't act as if you didn't say what you did.

After our conversation, I griped to Jeff. It made me feel a little better, but I'm sure it didn't help Jeff feel better.

When is it right to share your gripes with another? What helps the griper relieve stress without stressing out the other person?

What's the griping balance? I need to figure that out.

Am I A Summer Child?

My last post on the Mets was an optimistic one. It was obviously a good night for Curtis, but as I wrote, I wanted to hope and wanted to believe.

But then the Nationals came to town. They won the first three games, with the Mets salvaging the fourth. Next the Mets headed to Los Angeles where the Dodgers beat up on them for four games. The only good thing about the series was that it was on too late for us to witness the massacres.

I  began to wonder: am I just being naive? Am I a summer child from Game of Thrones?

“Oh, my sweet summer child," Old Nan said quietly, "what do you know of fear? Fear is for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the long night, when the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little children are born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow gaunt and hungry, and the white walkers move through the woods.” ― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

Is my winter a disastrous season for the Mets? Who are the white walkers?

Thank goodness the next stop for the Mets on their west coast swing was San Francisco. This time the Mets swept the Giants. I wondered maybe I wasn't a summer child. But as someone (Keith Hernandez I think) said this doesn't mean the Mets are good. It's just that the Giants are so bad.

The next series in Miami started badly, but the Mets won the last two games and the series.

Back home the Mets beat the Phillies in their first two games. It's been a roller coaster two weeks of Mets baseball.

I can't let it go without discussing the death of Anthony Young. AY was the definition of a bad luck pitcher: despite his respectable ERA of 3.89, AY holds the Mets record of 27 straight losses. AY was liked and respected by the Mets faithful. We're sorry to lose him so soon.

Lola's Hiking Philosophy

When we're at parks, Lola likes to go off the trails through fields and woods. As we crossed a field at Winslow Park on Thursday, I remembered this quote that describes her approach:

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. 

I garbled it a bit, I thought it was "do not follow where the path may lead," but I got the gist of it. Later I googled it to see the correct words and author--Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

I had posted a card with that quotation above my desk in my University of Delaware dorm room. I was idealistic then, with hopes of changing the world. I had vague dreams of going into politics and becoming a Senator. Maybe I haven't accomplished much, but at least I've changed Lola's world.

In a Funk

It's official--I realized it yesterday. I'm in a funk. There's no other way to describe my lethargy and indolence. I don't have a cold anymore; the snow is (slowly) dissipating. Spring is in the air; I should feel optimistic.

Someone said the first step in solving a problem is recognizing there is one.

(Thank you google--I just found the quote; it's from Will Mcavoy. Further googling shows that Will Mcavoy is a character played by Jeff Daniels from The Newsroom.

Okay here's the real person and the real quote: The first step in solving a problem is to recognize that it does exist.--Zig Ziglar.

Now that I've gotten lost in google, I've lost my train of thought for this post--almost. I need some kind of focus, some kind of goals. I have lots of things I need to do, want to do. Yet I've found it too easy lately to veg, binging on bad television and playing yahtzee. 

No more. I need to make some changes.

60 Years Ago Today...

Nikita Khrushchev first uttered the phrase: "We will bury you" to western diplomats.

I remember seeing a commercial which replayed those words--it had to have been years later, but I was young enough to take it literally. I was afraid of being buried alive.

Words can hurt.

Indian Summer?

Taking advantage of the current warm spell, we hiked at Putnam Park yesterday. We had hiked there once with Spike based on an entry in this book. Lola enjoyed exploring a new place. Today we returned to our home base of Taylor Farm. It was fun to see how excited Lola got when we were getting ready to go. Where should we go tomorrow?

As much as we are enjoying the warmth, apparently, there is some controversy if this is an Indian summer.

 I was reminded of the opening of the novel, Peyton Place.

“Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, hotly passionate, but fickle, she comes and goes as she pleases so that one is never sure whether she will come at all, nor for how long she will stay.”

I think I first read Peyton Place in high school for pleasure. I re-read it in college as part of a course, Film and American Society. I still remember that first line.

Isn't that a success for the writer? I never cared for the idea that all women are fickle, but still that line stayed with me.

Today I found that that line is listed among the great and the worst opening lines.

Whatever.

RIP Yogi

Yogi Berra died last night at age 90. Yogi is first and foremost a Yankee. But he also has a link to the Mets: briefly as a player and later as a manager.

Years ago, I picked up The Yogi Book at Shea Stadium. I loved this book so much, I read parts of it out loud to random fans as I waited in line at a Shea concession stand. I showed it to my friend Annette and she barely talked to me the rest of the evening; she kept reading it and laughing.

Yogi was brilliant: the Buddhist magazine Tricycle once ran an article, The Koans of Yogi Berra.

My favorite is "When you come to the fork in the road, take it." This is my mantra against indecision and inertia.

"You can observe a lot by watching." This also speaks to me. I need to pay attention.

Thanks Yogi.

Memorable Lines: 1945's Noir Classic Detour

I think Jeff and I watched Detour years ago, but it didn't make much of an impression on us. This time around, when I watched it as part of the Summer of Darkness, I watched it more closely.

Detour is the quintessential B picture noir, with a small budget and tight shooting schedule. Errol Morris said, "It has an unparalleled quality of despair, totally unrelieved by hope."

The movie includes these great lines:
 "Life's like a ballgame. You got to take a swing at whatever comes along before you wake up and find it's the ninth inning."

I may be prejudiced because I am a baseball fan, but I think baseball expressions and metaphors are rich and beautiful.

Mercy Musings

It's taken me about 15 minutes to log in to the Internet which has definitely disrupted the mellow calm I've been feeling this morning.

This is our last full day here. Last night I thought I might be ready to go home today. Now I'm glad for another day.

I slept much better last night. Woke up early again and  journaled. Next, I showered, dressed, got coffee and walked around the building and the grounds. At eight, I had a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns, French toast, more coffee and orange juice. I walked the labyrinth and sampled the water views from several wooden benches.

Now I'm sitting on my private porch. I guess people are busy in programs because I've only seen two other people outside.

Jeff sent me a wonderful email last night. It included the lines:

"It is more important to enjoy yourself than to write down words on a piece of paper. Who knows maybe you just need to stop thinking for a bit so you can start thinking again."

Last night I was doubting my writing--wondering why I did it--wondering if I am a writer. Darlene said something to the effect that by virtue of asking the question, I'm a writer.

I revised about 400 words and wrote about 600 yesterday. As I was writing, I thought that I had too much description, too much exposition, not enough action. It needed so much work.

But that's the whole point of the shitty first draft. You have to get something down first before you cut, edit and revise. I'm on my way.

Miscellaneous July Musings

Last Friday (okay--not July yet) I realized that I was putting on make-up to go to the dog park. (I did the same yesterday.) I wear make-up more often than not, but not usually on a day that consists of going to the gym, cleaning and going to the dog park. But dog park Fridays are more like cocktail parties. They could end up with us going out to dinner, so I figured make-up was in order.

This week Thursday seemed like a Friday because Friday was the official 4th of July holiday. Eight of us met at the dog park yesterday because Norwalk's fireworks were tonight.

July will be a busy month for me. I'm teaching a three-hour class each weekday morning for the next three weeks. I have tutoring obligations for Monday and Friday afternoons, possibly Wednesdays, and docent training obligations for Tuesdays and Thursdays. When I mentioned how busy this could be for me, my mother snarked that I would just be like people with a normal job. Okay she has a point, but she didn't take into account all the prep and travel time. Plus it's annoying to hear this from a woman who hasn't had to work in 40 years, and has no idea of today's job market.

Some great lines from the first few episodes of "Orange is the New Black":

"Nice is for cowards and democrats," says Red.

"That's why you women end up in prison because you suck at crime," says corrupt guard whose name I don't remember.

"I Can't Do Everything Today..."

"but I can take one small step."

This is one of the 19 things remarkable people think.

I read several articles via my Linked In Pulse email with links. (I debated putting helpful in quotes.) I skimmed articles about irritating behaviors, tips to help you read more, as well as other tips to improve 2015.

The "small steps" is the thing that spoke most to me. It's definitely something I've heard before, and something that has worked for me before. Sometimes I just have to be reminded.

I need to take small steps on projects and goals.

On Failure

I found this quote today in an issue of The Week.

Failure is success in progress. -- Albert Einstein

The second quotation was posted in a classroom in Darien High where I taught a SAT class this summer.

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. -- Robert F. Kennedy

First Day of Fall

In about one hour, fall begins. Last week at the gym, I found this quotation in the October issue of Glamour magazine:

"Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Fall is my favorite season; it gives me hope that I can still accomplish many things.

Simpsons Marathon Continues

Today is the tenth day of the marathon. I can't pinpoint when the Simpsons went downhill; I've never figured out my favorite season.

Yesterday I caught one of my favorite episodes: Season 18's 24 Minutes, a parody of 24 and Springfield's Counter Truancy Unit. Lisa and her team save the school bake sale from a stink bomb.

I also set the DVR to record The Book Job from Season 23. I had saved that on our old DVR.

Other favorite episodes:

Moaning Lisa and Life on the Fast Lane from Season 1

Season 3's Homer at the Bat and Black Widower

A Streetcar Named Marge, I Love Lisa and Last Exit to Springfield from Season 4

Cape Feare from Season 5

Sideshow Bob Roberts and Homer Badman from Season 6

Radioactive Man, A Fish Called Selma, Bart on the Road and Summer of 4 Ft. 2 from Season 7

A Millhouse Divided and Brother from Another Series from Season 8

Season 11's Take My Wife Sleaze with the romantic line,  "My wife is not a doobie, to be passed around from person to person! I made a sacred vow, on my wedding day, to bogart her for the rest of my life." (Thanks IMDB.)

Trilogy of Error, New Kids on the Blecch and Skinner's Sense of Snow (I especially love the title of the latter) from Season 12

She of Little Faith from Season 13

Season 18's 24 Minutes

The Book Job from Season 23

I made this list looking at the FXX marathon schedule as well as The Simpsons wiki.  I may have missed a few and may change my mind depending on my mood. I didn't list any Treehouse of Horror episodes even though I could list some individual segments as favorites. "When are they going to get to the fireworks factory?" is one of our favorite quotes; it's from The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show from Season 8.  I love many of the Itchy and Scratchy cartoons and all appearances of Troy McClure.

I guess things went downhill from Season 12--that's the last season I had more than one favorite. Trilogy of Error is my all-time favorite episode. I've listed 23 here. Maybe someday I'll select my top 10.